Snap Shot/Lis Wiehl/309 pages

A picture from a civil rights parade brings Lisa back to Texas after years apart from her father, a former FBI agent who helped investigate the shooting of JFK. When Lisa was just four years old in 1965, her father took her to the parade while he was off-duty. She sat next to another little girl who happened to be African American and attending the parade with her mother. As Lisa's father started taking pictures of them, shots rang out and the main speaker, Benjamin Gray, fell to the ground. Lisa's memories of that day are hazy, but when her father calls her to come help him free the man he thinks was falsely convicted of the shooting and now scheduled to be executed, she goes home to see what she can do to help. The mystery they uncover leads them to a dangerous cover-up.


Based on a picture taken by the author's father, Wiehl has woven a intricate story of a fictional shooting with the real-life events of the time period. Wiehl's father is also a retired FBI agent who investigated the Kennedy shooting. He consulted with Bill O'Reilly for O'Reilly's book, Killing Kennedy. The book includes an author's note, an interview with Richard L. Wiehl  and two essays: one by O'Reilly and another by Juan Williams. An interesting read, but ultimately, I was hoping for something more intricate and in depth about race relations in America.

Edge of Eternity / Ken Follett 1098 p.

Ken Follett completes his Century trilogy with Edge of Eternity which continues the stories of 5 families: American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh as they move through the tumultuous times of 1961-1989.  Through these families, Follett tells the history of the times: the rise and fall the the Berlin Wall, the Freedom Rides, assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and crumbling of the Kremlin.  The third generation gives voice to the tragedies and hard times of this era.  It is the personalization that give life to the stories and compels the reader to keep turning the pages.

Those readers who enjoy this series may also enjoy the works of James Michener, North and South by John Jakes, and Edward Rutherfurd's Dublin Saga.

Check the library catalog.

The Help / Kathryn Stockett / 451 Pages

This was an excellent book, one of those where you want to get to the end so you know what happens, but at the same time you don't want it to end.  I really don't know what to say about it without giving the story away.  The characters were well-developed and the story was believable.  Now I want to go see the movie!