A look back at my earlier posts this month (3rd, 12th) show I was deep into deciding what book to offer for discussion in 2021 for the B&B book club. I had worked down to three, then the list went back up to 15. So I began to work on it again. I even sent the list out to some friends asking for their suggestions. The book I finally came up with wasn't on the initial two lists but a late entry.
"Dreamers of the Day" by Mary Doria Russell is a story that begins in America during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, but quickly moves to Egypt and the early 1920s. As typical with all of Russell's novels, it was very heavily researched, occupied with exciting characters - some real, some fictional, all amid very descriptive locations.
Mary Doria Russell is one of my very favorite authors. I have read four of her about nine novels. She wrote two about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp which were very long and exciting. Her first book, The Sparrow, is sort of sci-fi, but very good. it's about a failed space mission to another planet to establish a colony which ultimately fails. The sole survivor is an Italian (or is he Spanish?) Jesuit priest. The story switched between the present where he is trying to tell what happened between being tortured by the Church, and the mission on the planet. As you can probably tell, I liked the book. She wrote a sequel but I haven't read it.
I hope by introducing Russell to the club that others will read her. She is one of the best fiction authors I have read. Oh, did I forget to mention that she has a Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology?
One last thing - I couldn't get my font to change back to the normal font so I just left it. The title was fine, but everything else is screwed up. We'll see next time.
