In the early 1920s, the American soldiers who had survived the brutal trench warfare had returned from the Great War in Europe.  They returned to their homes and to new lives in a rapidly urbanizing country.  Except some people lived a rural existence, not much different than the lives of their parents before them.  And some of those same people had spent the war deep underground in a coal mine.

Part thriller, part exploration of contemporary race issues in America, part mirror to our online selves, this novel is all heart and hard to put down. I tore through While We Were Burning in about two sittings in the course of 24 hours and found myself fascinated by the characters and the story. The tale is perhaps a tad melodramatic at times near the end, but it hovers in the realm of believable in the way that our online selves have created a society where there is more melodrama.

Orphaned, alone, and working to survive, life has been rough for Annabel until her fortune changes with a chance meeting with lawyer George Craig. George has newly arrived from big city Knoxville and is educated, intellectually curious, and immediately smitten with Annabel. After a whirlwind romance that seems almost too good to be true, they settle in to a nice home with neighbors that Annabel befriends. For the first time, she is exposed to a middle/upper-middle class existence in her rural town of Dayton, Tennessee.

The Appalachian Trail is established and well-known, perhaps making its greatest foray into general consciousness a quarter century ago with Bill Bryson’s 1997 tome *A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail*. I have lived in the shadow - or the dust, as it were - of the trail for about 30 years with sections running close to several places I’ve lived in Virginia.

Benedict Arnold: It is a name that is immediately recognizable to most in the U.S. If you were to poll people about what they know about him, most would probably immediately describe him as a traitor and would hopefully also realize that the historic moment he was affiliated with was the American Revolution. Beyond that scratch on the surface of history, probably most people would come up blank with anything else to share about Benedict Arnold.

I listened to the audiobook version of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Widsom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, read by the author herself, in what has to be one of the most soothing voices I have ever heard. Combining her voice with the content of the book itself, I found Braiding Sweetgrass to have a meditative quality, relaxing me the same in a way similar to when I listen to audio-guided meditation sessions.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese - In a small town in India, one family has a curse where each generation will lose one person to a drowning death. Sometimes they drown in rivers, sometimes in small puddles of water. It is from this unlikely starting point that this epic novel takes flight over multiple generations that confront class struggles, medical mysteries and ailments, loss and love, all against the backdrop of the medical industry in India and eventually a salvation.

I added twelve more books to my 2023 reading list in May and June: The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel, The Giver by Lois Lowry, Named of the Dragon by Susanna Kearsley, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and many more!.

After a slow-down in March, I picked up the pace and read a total of 19 books over the course of March and April in total, getting me a couple of books ahead of schedule again.