I read Darkest Flame over the weekend. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18169912-darkest-flame?from_search=true
I read Fire Rising Monday. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18404115-fire-rising
I finished reading Dark Heat Wednesday morning. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17566623-dark-heat?from_search=true
Goin’ Postal is an interesting collection of creative-nonfiction short stories about the author’s life working for the United States Postal Service. The stories are hilarious, serious, scary, heartbreaking, and do a great job of depicting what life is like working anywhere with a tight knit group of people. I’ve only worked in four places in my life, and all of those places felt like this. We had our in-house squabbles, our deaths, our births, our disasters, our nights away from the job, and everything in-between. We both loved and hated each other, as most families do.
This collection does a great job at giving its reader a look into the day-to-day life inside the post office and an even greater look how human and flawed management and upper-management are even when they won’t admit it. For anyone who has worked a job where your boss has come to you with the most ludicrous request and all you can do is look at him or her with a “you can’t be serious” expression on your face, this collection is for you.
The Creek is another collection of creative-nonfiction novellas that is about the lives of the people who settled the land on the creek on which Ms. D’Ettore grew up. She has a beautiful imagination, and carves out a wonderful of tale of love, murder, betrayal, heartache, death, and determination that surround a number of families that lived on the land over time. Her female characters are always strong and self-sufficient, which always draws me to her work. Her take on the lives of these families, from a young woman and her father who farmed the land, to a widowed mother of five who lost everything and had to move to the creek to raise her children alone, to the soldier’s family who suffered much in their grief over his loss, are realistic and not glorified. We are a people ruled by our hearts and our emotions, and her characters always depict this, making them relatable and true.