The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

It's been a busy few days, with not a lot of time for reading, but I did manage to sneak in some down time on Monday night and finished The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg.  I have been a fan of hers since Fried Green Tomatoes, and this book certainly didn't disappoint. 

Imagine finding out at the age of fifty-nine, that you were adopted as an infant.  And that you are actually 60.  Sarah Jane Poole, also known as Sookie, discovers that the reason she has never been able to live up to her mother's expectations of what a Daughter of the Confederacy should be is that she is not, in fact, her mother's daughter.  According to her birth certificate, her mother's name is Fritzi Jurdabalinski.

She begins to research her birth mother's family and learns that they are a Polish family from Wisconsin who ran a gas station.  The book jumps back and forth between Sookie's story in the present day, and the Jurdabralinski family's during World War I.  She learns that her mother and aunts were female pilots during the war and eventually seeks out her "real" family.

In an interesting twist, shortly after finishing the book, this story about World War II female pilots appeared in my Facebook feed: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/92-year-old-female-world-war-ii-pilot-flies-article-1.2220910.
Although this particular article is about an English woman pilot, it helped to put a face on Fritzi and her pilot friends.  It amazes me how often I read something in a book and suddenly find it popping up everywhere in my real life.

In other book news...
I gave myself a serious case of the shivers while trying to read Heart Shaped Box late at night while the husband was out playing hockey.  I had most of the lights off in the rest of the house, and only got three chapters in before I had to put it down. I was tempted to put it in the freezer.  However, a further attempt yesterday afternoon was much easier...I'm about halfway through now.  Seriously creepy, but I generally like that kind of thing, so I'm enjoying it.

Nephew Ryan and I have decided to abandon our journey through Narnia in favor of Harry Potter.  We're starting the first book on Friday.

After giving up on Heart Shaped Box the other night, I picked up The Apple Orchard by Susan Wiggs.  Another story about a woman discovering things she didn't know about her family...in this case a grandfather and half-sister she didn't know she had.  Stay tuned...