I threw my back out last week and had to stay home from work - mostly laid on my bed with ice and read. I read a bunch of books - Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland - For a century, everyone assumed that the iconic Tiffany lamps were conceived and designed by that American master of stained glass, Louis Comfort Tiffany. Not so! It was a woman! If it weren't for the Victorian zest for writing voluminous letters, Clara Driscoll would be only a footnote in the history of decorative arts. This book follows her life over 16 years and her job as the dept head of the Tiffany Girls - a group of women who made the beautiful lamps, mosaics, dishes, glass panels, etc. Clara was the designer of the dragonfly lamp, lotus lamp and the list goes on. I really enjoyed this book. It is set right around the turn of the 20th century. It made me want to own a Tiffany lamp.
The next book I read was My Name is Mary Sutter by Robin oliveira. The Civil War offers a 20-year-old midwife who dreams of becoming a doctor the medical experience she craves, plus hard work and heartbreak, in this rich debut that takes readers from a small upstate New York doctor's office to a Union hospital overflowing with the wounded and dying. Though she's too young for the nursing corps, Mary Sutter goes to Washington, anyway, and, after a chance meeting with a presidential secretary, is led to the Union Hotel Hospital, where she assists chief surgeon William Stipp and becomes so integral to Stipp's work she ignores her mother's pleas to return home to deliver her sister's baby. From a variety of perspectives—Mary, Stipp, their families, and social, political, and military leaders—the novel offers readers a picture of a time of medical hardship, crisis, and opportunity - by Publisher's weekly. I also enjoyed this book - it was very interesting to see medicine through a woman's eye and also the civil war. You should definitely read it!!
The other book was Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Her U.S. debut fictionalizes the 1942 Paris roundups and deportations, in which thousands of Jewish families were arrested, held at the Vélodrome d'Hiver outside the city, then transported to Auschwitz. Forty-five-year-old Julia Jarmond, American by birth, moved to Paris when she was 20 and is married to the arrogant, unfaithful Bertrand Tézac, with whom she has an 11-year-old daughter. Julia writes for an American magazine and her editor assigns her to cover the 60th anniversary of the Vél' d'Hiv' roundups (Publisher's Weekly). I don't want to tell you anything else. This was so good I could not put it down. You should definitely read it!!
