A Piece of the World- Book Feature

“What she wants most - what she truly yearns for - is what any of us want: to be seen.”

I will be the first to tell you that my reading taste is all over the map. When my passion for reading first blossomed when I was young, I knew early on that my love for reading mostly was based on my love of fantasy. I read hundreds of books within a few years and even tried my hand at writing. However, as I grew up and the pressures of teen life and college on the horizon began to take precedence in my time, my reading rate dropped tremendously. I still read but only a couple dozen a year, then one dozen, then less than ten. After college it became highly important to me to pick up reading once again. Except, now, I really don't know what my reading style is all about?? 

It's like I'm having to rediscover what I love most about the books that I read, and find my groove again. 

I came across this book while scrolling through audio books on Libby. I was intrigued right away because it is based on the painting Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth from 1948. You know the one- windswept young woman pulling herself along in the golden fields, downhill from an old and worn house that she looks at with a sort of startled impression that we can only feel as she is turned away. The woman this painting is based on is Christina Olson- a 55 year old woman who lived her entire life in that house on the hill with her family. She never married and she never had children. She only went as far as Boston! Christina was born in 1893 with a condition that kept her from walking normally her entire life. Her father was a seaman from Sweden and her mother the descendant of seafaring Hathorns who built the house in the late 1700's. 

That's right, the house where Christina spent the entirety of her life with her brother Alvaro was built by her ancestors. 

The book is full of family lore and juxtaposition between the witch hunting family founders, the seafaring adventurers, and Christina herself- smart and capable but caught in the folds of family duty, disability, and fear of change. 

Christina becomes and seems to have always been the girl in that field, pulling herself back to the house and the life that she's not quite sure is actually best for her. Each choice in her past becomes a mile-marker of what the future will hold and it is only now, looking back as a middle aged woman who is hosting a talented painter in her home, can she see those points for what they became. 

This book was really... lovely. It was heart wrenching at times, it was smooth and slow like a sail on soft seas, and it is a comfort. It is a reflection on choices, on the path of life, and on the beauty that still lives in old things. 

It asks you how much of our path is already set out? How much do we have control over? How much can our choices do to change the inevitable facts of our life from birth?

This book is great for:

Someone who needs a comfort read. 

Someone who feels like taking some time to reflect on life and our choices.

Someone who has New England ancestors.

I think one thing I learned from my recent reading favorites is that in this time in my life, I like books that aren't about the world ending. This may have quite a bit to do with the fact that the world might actually be ending and there is a lot of drama and anxiety in our current political state....but anyway... This book has heartache and lost love but it also has home, comfort, familial love, and the intimacy of knowing a place like the back of your hand. When the world is hard and our future seems uncertain, books like this can remind you that many people have felt like this before, that you are not alone, and that we can only make the best choices available to us...and then we must go on. 

Love always and happy hunting, 

Morgan