They Came to Stay

 

By Marjorie Margolies and Ruth Gruber

Back in the early seventies, Marjorie Margolies decided she wanted to adopt a child from Korea. At the time, she was a career woman and not married although she had not ruled out marriage at some time in the future. In those days, unmarried women (and men, I suppose) were not encouraged to adopt children. But Marjorie was determined and flew to Korea to find the child of her dreams: Lee Heh. 

Lee Heh was a dream child, sweet, smart, enthusiastic about her new life and new mother. Sure, there were adjustments, but Lee Heh did fantastically well. So well, indeed, that Marjorie began to think of adopting a second child to be a little sister to Lee Heh. This time she set her sights on Vietnam, this being the time when the Vietnam war was winding down. 

And so Holly (not her birth name) came into their lives. Unlike Lee Heh, Holly's father was an American and Holly really didn't look Vietnamese. Whatever the truth of Holly's origin, it soon became clear that she was a troubled child. Marjorie and Lee Heh's lives were disrupted by Holly's rages and neediness. Holly spoke almost no English and Marjorie had a difficult time figuring out what she was so upset about. Eventually Marjorie found a Vietnamese student to serve as translator and together they found out what Holly was finding difficult to deal with in her new homeland. The whole family went into therapy to help Holly deal with her childhood traumas and to help Marjorie and Lee Heh deal with Holly.

This was a very engrossing and true story. But beyond adopting the two girls, Marjorie went on to have quite a life. She worked for NBC News and won several Emmys during her career. She also ran for Congress and served during President Bill Clinton's term. Holly and Lee Heh were not her only children. She later married and one of her sons is married to Chelsea Clinton. Marjorie is quite an accomplished and amazing woman.

Review by the New York Times.

The Hostage Heart

 

By Gerald Green

Terrorists burst into an operating room and hold the patient and doctors hostage for $10,000,000. The terrorists have a couple of their people planted among the hospital staff who have been working at the hospital for several weeks which gives the terrorists an inside edge. 

Dr. Eric Lake is the heart surgeon who is forced to perform surgery on the wealthy man the terrorists have targeted for extortion. The funny thing is the patient, Tench, is already under anesthesia and remains unconscious during the whole attack. He won't know anything about it until he wakes up, if he is lucky enough to survive the surgery and the terrorists. 

The terrorist are a bunch of misfits who have decided they will reform capitalist society by arousing the downtrodden peoples of the world. They call themselves the Wretched of the Earth. Needless to say, the plan blows up in their faces when they try to escape the hospital with the ransom.

This was an OK story. Written back in the 1970s, one of the main characters, Dr. Lake, is constantly lighting up a cigarette and no one ever questions this heart doctor as to the wisdom of smoking when he knows, I assume, that smoking is damaging to the heart, among other things. So that was a bit of an off note. Was the author trying to make his novel appealing to big tobacco? 

But over all this is just another typical hostage-taking type thriller, nothing particularly special. It was apparently made into a TV movie starring Bradford Dillman as Dr. Lake in 1977 and Stephen Davies as the terrorist leader, John Trask.

I wonder if Dr. Lake was as much of a tobacco fiend in the movie as he was in the book?

Spell of the Witch World

 

By Andre Norton

A Witch World collection

A small collection including a novella and two short stories, the novella is Dragon Scale Silver and the short stories are Dream Smith and Amber Out of Quayth. 

Dragon Scale Silver  is the story of young woman who has to make her own way in the world after the small town where she lives is overrun during war. 

Elys has been raised by her father to be more self-sufficient that most girls of her time. Along with her twin brother, Elyn, she has learned to hunt and ride and handle weapons.  From the village wise woman, she has learned healing skills, magic spells and herb craft. So when the people of the village are forced to flee from the invaders, Elys becomes their de facto leader, because most of the men have left to fight, including her brother Elyn.

Once she gets the villagers settled and secure in a new location in the wilderness, Elys sets out of rescue her brother Elyn, who has become ensorcelled by an ancient curse. She helped in her quest by a soldier, Jervon, whose comrades were defeated by the enemy.

Dream Smith is the story of a young man who is cruelly disfigured in an explosion that occurred when his father tried to smelt a strange new metal. Collard becomes a recluse, hiding his disfigured face and body from the gaze of the folks of his village. But, despite their first terrible experience with the strange metal, Collard continues to work with it, creating miniature statues of mythological and imaginary creatures. 

Collard then hears about Lady Jacinda, the daughter of a lord. Jacinda is said to be deformed and is being sent away from her home because her father's new wife finds her repulsive to look at. Collard begins to have dreams about his little works of art and Jacinda and he arranges to have some of his creations sent to her. He is gratified and pleased when he gets word that she really loved the gifts. He then dreams of a new work of art and creates a scene that will prove to be not just a work of art but a whole new world for the two of them.

Amber Out of Quayth  is another story of a girl who is a bit of an outsider. Her life was good until her brother got married and his new wife didn't like her new sister-in-law, Ysmay. She treats Ysmay like an unpaid servant, so when Ysmay mets a wealthy stranger at a local fair and he pursues her, she agrees to marry him, even though there is something about him that is troubling. 

Their first night together, her new husband, Hylle, explains he must remain celibate because of his mystical studies. Hylle spends most of his time in his tower with his studies and Ysmay begins to understand that he married her because she has something that is necessary to his studies and that she is simply a tool in his plot.

I enjoyed all three stories. It is always fun reading Andre Norton's Witch World stories, like visiting an old and entertaining friend.

Secrets of the Supernatural

 

By Daniel S. Levy

The author gives brief overviews of various aspects of the supernatural. He doesn't go into much depth, just touches on a wide variety of subjects.

Chapter 1: Faith, Magic & the Miraculous which includes healing and miracles, love magic, levitation, divination, sixth sense, astrology, talismans, alchemy, immortality, superstitions, black and white magic, and satanism.

Chapter 2: The World of Witchcraft

Chapter 3: The Undead: Vampires, Ghosts & More which includes zombies, mummies, werewolves and Halloween.

Chapter 4: Signs of the Otherworldly which deals with UFOs and other mysterious phenomena. 

This was a fairly interesting read, but just basically skims the subjects. Most of the items rate only a few paragraphs. But I did come across some information about the occult and the Nazis that I was not aware of before. And it has lots of color images.

The Song of Hartgrove Hall

 

By Natasha Solomons

This is the story of Harry Fox-Talbot, called Fox by his friends and family and of Hartgrove Hall, the family estate he grew up on in the 1930s and 40s.

Set at the end of WW II and in the early 2000s, we see Fox as a budding young composer in the 1940s and as a lonely, elderly man  in the 2000s.

Just a schoolboy, Fox misses out on serving in the military, unlike his two older brothers, Jack and George. Jack and George come home to Hartgrove Hall to the distressing news that their father can no longer afford to pay for the upkeep of the crumbling mansion and is planning to sell it. The three sons talk the old man into letting them try to make the property pay by improving the farms. 

Jack has a girlfriend, Edie Rose, an attractive and successful pop singer that both Fox and George are smitten by. It soon becomes clear that Edie likes Fox too, but she stays with Jack. When Jack and Edie come home and announce they are now married, Fox is devastated and leaves Hartgrove Hall the same day. 

Time passes and Edie comes looking for Fox and they began having an affair. She and Jack haven't become parents yet and when she becomes pregnant, she doesn't know which is the father, Jack or Fox. She and Fox decide she has to tell Jack about the affair and Jack is furious and leaves Hartgrove Hall, leaving Fox and Edie to do as they please.

Meanwhile the story shifts from his youth to his old age. Edie has died and Fox is depressed and finding life no longer worth living. But he finds new joy and purpose in the form of his young grandson, Robin, who Fox realizes is a musical prodigy. Fox sharing his love of music with Robin makes life worthwhile again.

Surprisingly interesting, I wasn't expecting too much from this story but it turned out really good. Not a typical romance, as much of the story is about Fox and Robin as about Fox and Edie. I truly did enjoy it.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.