This one is my CBR Bingo Summer read, as I picked it up at the cabin we stayed at during vacation (and replaced it with a book that I just couldn’t get through).
Jean Gilkyson and her daughter are on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Jean has a history of picking shitty men, and her daughter Griff is growing up too quickly because of it. After a particularly violent night, Jean and Griff leave town to make a life elsewhere. Unfortunately, their money runs out quickly and they end up stranded on the side of the road. Jean turns to the only option left to her- returning home to a tiny town in Wyoming. Jean’s family is dead, but she goes to the house of her estranged father-in-law Einar. Einar blames Jean for the death of his son Griffin. Einar had no idea that young Griff even existed, and is surprised to find that he has a granddaughter. Einar and Jean make an uneasy truce for the sake of Griff, but it is tested when Jean’s abusive boyfriend comes looking for her. This was a quick read and a good story.
An Unfinished Life replaced Nancy Mitford: the Biography. Lord help me, I tried to get through this one. I tried it for two months and got no further than halfway through. I picked it up at the used book table at a church festival and the bookseller chatted a bit about how fascinating the Mitford sisters were. I hadn’t heard of them, really, so I got this book expecting to be entertained. And perhaps, if I knew anything at all about these people, I would have been. But the author, Harold Acton, was a close friend of Nancy Mitford and writes this biography through the lens of her personal correspondence with himself and various members of her family and friend circle. I’m sure that those people found this book to be charming, or at least comprehensible. Since I had none of this knowledge, I couldn’t sort out what in the world I was reading. I’ll have to look in to a biography that takes a more distant approach.