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This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub

January 12, 2026 by Site Author

Published 2022

Time travels by a forty year old woman who desperately wants to find a way to save her father. Alice Stern and her dad Leonard are New Yorkers through and through. When the narrative begins Leonard is in the hospital and is unresponsive. Alice hasn’t been able to converse with him in weeks. She knows the end is near but is having trouble facing it. On her fortieth birthday she meets her best friend Sam for dinner, but the meal is cut short by an emergency involving Sam’s young son. Alice goes on to some of her favorite haunts, determined to have a big time on such a milestone. Forty years old, still single, still in the same apartment and the same job after more than a decade. Having had too much to drink she decides to go by her Dad’s place but can’t find her key to the house. She slips inside the old guardhouse, used now days to store gardening tools. Alice curls up inside and falls asleep. When she awakes, she is sixteen, it’s her birthday but twenty four years earlier. She’s in her old bedroom at home, and her Dad is in the kitchen having breakfast. Leonard doesn’t notice anything is amiss but Alice is both delighted and scared. Delighted that she has her Dad back, healthy and laughing, his old self. But scared that she’s losing her mind. She remembers a lot of things about that sixteenth birthday, where they went for lunch and her party later that night. As it turns out, the time travel lasts one day. When she gets back to her forty year old self, not much has changes. But Alice has plans. She begins travelling back and forth between her forty year old self and her sixteen year old self, hoping to change both her Dad’s life and her own so that she can hold onto him for longer. She wonders what would’ve happened if she had not let the love of her life get involved with another girl at her sixteenth birthday party. Would they have been happy? Will convincing her Dad to quit smoking keep him healthier longer? All these questions Alice has a chance to explore. By going back in time and changing just a few things, important things like taking care of yourself and speaking up for herself instead of letting things ride. How will this affect the years going forward.

It’s an interesting concept, not sure I agree with it but I enjoyed seeing how it turned out.

Henry, Himself by Stewart O’nan

May 18, 2023 by Site Author

Published 2019

I am glad to discover this writer of such a quiet little story, about the Maxwell family of Pittsburgh. Henry was named for his mother’s brother who was killed in the war before Henry was born. the name therefore seems in a way used to him and he would’ve preferred to be called Hank. But Henry he is and will be it seems.

Henry is retired now, and he and his wife Emily joke about when he is gone and she left by herself except for their dog, Rufus. Having read it I wonder who is going to do all of the little things around the house, not to mention the old cabin at Chataqua, when he is gone. Who will wash the dishes, a chore that Henry prides himself on every evening. Various ailments come and go, a fall becomes potentially dangerous, the kids and grandkids provide drama in their settled lives. Where to go for dinner is a bigger decision than you might think at this stage of life.

I loved how the little things have become the central focus which is described so clearly I felt I was part of the clan. Now I look forward to reading more of these novels and seeing what is happening with the family.

Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale, by Lynda Rutledge

January 31, 2018 by Site Author Leave a Comment

Published 2012

Characters: Faith Bass Darling, matriarch of Bass, Texas
Claudia Jean Darling, her daughter
Bobbie Ann Blankenship, Claudia’s childhood friend who is now an antique dealer
John Jasper Johnson, the black deputy, Mike Darling’s best friend and fellow football superstar
Claude Angus Darling, Faith’s deceased husband
Mike Darling, Faith’s son who was killed in an accident as a teenager.

‘On the last day of the millennium, after a midnight revelation from God, Faith Bass Darling had a garage sale.’
But not just any yard sale. Hauled out onto the lawn of her mansion were priceless antiques, a Tiffany lamp collection, an heirloom ring and a 10,000 bill. Faith Bass Darling is in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her daughter Claudia Jean has not spoken to her mother in over a decade. So when Faith decides to sell all of her possessions on the day before January 1 in the year 2000, there is no one to stand in her way. Bobbie Jean, as owner of the local antique store, hurries over to the sale and tries to keep Faith from letting her beautiful things go for almost nothing, a few dollars for each item, or twenty dollars for an antique worth thousands. The local deputy, John Jasper also tries to dissuade Faith. But Faith is having trouble remembering who she is, let alone who anyone else is. Memories mix in with reality in her brain and she can’t tell which is which. Bobbie does get in touch with Claudia Jean and tells her she must come home, which she does, for the first time since she ran away as a teenager, after the death of her older brother Mike.
This is a story about a broken family, the Darlings, whose ancestors founded the small town in Texas. Faith’s father owned the town bank which she inherited after his death, along with her husband, Claude Angus, whose true colors began to show after her father is gone. The accidental death of Mike, everyone’s ‘darling’ tears the family apart, a tragedy which affects each member in its own way. Claudia’s homecoming means having to face her anger and sense of betrayal by her mother, and maybe a chance to mend the relationship. But with Faith’s mental state slipping into and out of the here and now, it’s hard to get through to her or even know what she is saying.

I will comment here on how unnerving I found it that Faith Bass Darling would set all of her beautiful belongings out on the front lawn and almost give them away to perfect strangers. Every time the story told of another yard sale minivan hauling off a priceless antique it almost turned my stomach. I have a few antiques myself, though nothing on the order of what Faith is almost giving away, and the thought that she no longer cared for these objects to the point that she sold them to people who had no idea of their value, who very well could have used them as trinkets struck me as wrong. But maybe that’s just me.
This is much more than a tale about an older lady struggling with Alzheimer’s selling off her belongings. Friendship, lost love, broken dreams as well as new ones, and what really matters in a family are all here.