Joanne Provo

What Have I Been Reading?

The Bookbinder

Set in Oxford at the start of WWI, Peggy and her autistic sister Maude, live in a houseboat and work in the bindery of the University Press. They spend their days folding pages and bringing home the “ruined” books. Peggy dreams of attending Somerville College but faces an uphill battle. While volunteering at a hospital she falls in love with a severely wounded Belgian soldier. The story of lives lost and love found during wartime. As an added bonus, an education in the bookbinding process.

Buckeye

A multi-generational story set in a small Ohio town. The events are set in motion when Margaret Salt, a woman orphaned at birth, arrives. She finds herself in a loveless marriage and while her husband is serving in WWII, initiates an affair with a man who stayed back due to a childhood disability. His wife has psychic powers, and it turns out everyone is trying to reconnect with someone while hiding secrets from those they love. These disrupted lives end up intertwined for decades.

The Beautiful and Damned

Anthony Patch is an entitled young man who wiles away his days drinking and waiting for his rich grandfather to die and leave him a huge inheritance. He becomes enraptured by an equally entitled woman, and their days are filled with parties and arguments. In spite of these self-indulgent characters there is a lot to like in the beautifully crafted phrases describing the pre-WWI era in New York where anything was possible.