G. J. Berger's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Twelve-year-old Gene Hinton is the youngest of four brothers in India of the 1930s. Gene’s American Baptist missionary parents arrived in Bengal twenty years before. The family lives in a large mission house and takes in boarders. Native Arthur has served the Hintons from soon after they arrived in India. Gene and Arthur have formed a special bond.
An imperious British judge from a city near the far-away mountains, “Uncle” Ellis, suddenly arrives at the mission house. Ellis has been a family friend for many years but now provides scant details about why and for how long he must stay. He brings with him six Afghan armed guards in full uniform. Gene and Arthur wonder about Ellis, but the other boys and their mother seem delighted by his sudden visit. Soon after Ellis’ arrival, a beautiful young Indian woman begs to stay for the duration of her pregnancy. A pet monkey clambers around the house. A stray dog befriends Arthur and then Ellis. A leopard prowls the nearby forest.
Struggles for power erupt. Local Indians riot against British rule. As life for non-natives becomes more dangerous, the Hintons consider going back to America. Arthur chafes at his abject poverty. Without the Hintons, he owns nothing and has no purpose. Gene tries to get out from under his constantly-mocking brothers. Ellis asserts cruel control over every person and animal around him.
This debut novel pulls readers into every character, every animal, every setting, every plot line. The heat, dust, insects, and monsoons frame the seething tensions in the house. How long will the Hintons stay? What will become of Arthur? Who is Ellis and why did he flee his judge post? The ending takes one’s breath away and its impact will linger long after the last page. .

Oprah selected this one as her 2024 Summer read. In the spring of 1919, young John Sawtelle and his wife, Mary, leave their jobs and home in Hartford, Wisconsin, to settle in the north on unkempt farmland with a worn-down house and giant barn. John can walk 63 yards on his hands and is an avid reader, thinker, and note taker. He believes anything is possible, while Mary is as practical as she is beautiful. Joined by two school friends and three dogs, John and Mary yearn for the future that their new place and freedom will bring. One of the two Sawtelle friends is a severely wounded veteran, the other a quiet craftsman/builder of anything needed.
The nearby tiny town’s dry goods store is run by Walter and his daughter, Ida. Walter found baby Ida back in 1871 after a forest fire wiped out her town. Ida, a peculiar spirit, summons swarms of bees or lightning bolts to save Walter or Mary from harm. Working non-stop to fix house and barn, the group manages impossible tasks rather well. Mary and John raise two sons. Through it all, their main purpose becomes training young dogs for sale. Their dogs behave so well that buyers stretch across the US and over to Japan and South Africa.
This sprawling work recounts the lives of the main characters and others until the early 1960s, with asides ranging from man’s domestication of wolves to the proper use of “lie” or “lay”. Wroblewski’s creative sub plots and beautiful writing deeply explore the nature of friendship, work, love, decency, treachery, even life itself. The roughly 1000 pages might have made two or three separate novels, but readers will find something to savor from the first page to the last.

In the winter of 1966, thirty-eight-year-old Posey Burch Jarvis has had enough of her unglamorous Tennessee small town life. Posey styles her hair, clothes and makeup after Jackie Kennedy and pines for the dashing and wealthy doctor, known as CJ, who seduced her at the tender age of nineteen. For too long she’s been married to much older Vern. He owns and runs a second-hand store. They live in a small suburban house with their eighteen-year-old daughter, Callie Jane.
Callie Jane is engaged to her lifelong best friend, Trace. Attractive Callie Jane was her high school valedictorian and almost the state’s spelling bee champ. She now wants much more than Trace or the house and kids that will soon follow. She moves out of the family home and angles to flee to California.
A distant aunt dies and leaves Posey the biggest house in the area with enough money to fix it up. Now Posey can plan in earnest the moves that will allow her to join the upper social circles and win CJ back. Tumblers of gin and the deep need to impress fuel Posey’s every move from start to finish.
Parman superbly teases out the good and bad sides of people. True to life secondary characters, Southern customs and foods, buzzing gossip, and a peeping Tom augment the larger themes. The two main plots (Posey’s quests and Callie Jane’s search for her own life) build through clever twists and turns. This novel effectively combines very human foibles, hilarious circumstances, and honest yearnings of the heart, with page-turning endings.