When We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

This is a very entertaining historical fiction novel based on a real life incident/scandal.

Rill is a 12-year-old girl who lives a romantic and very unconventional life as a river rat. She and her family live on a river house boat, on the Mississippi River. The house boat is tied up near Memphis as the novel opens.

Tragedy strikes her family when her mother confronts a difficult childbirth and her father takes her mother to a nearby hospital. Before her parents return, the police arrive with a woman who removes all five of the children from the house boat and takes them to a boarding house filled with other children who are wards of the state.  Not all of them are orphans; some have been actually been snatched off the street. Most have been signed away by their parents, but not always with their parents' true consent.

I read this with a book group and the members offered a lot of opinions that I found worth noting. Two folks thought that Wingate is a beautiful prose stylist; I agree. Several folks noted that the structure of the plot was quite predictable. I agree with this point as well, and, in fact, while I was reading the book I felt that I knew almost exactly what was going to happen and what was going to be revealed. Usually, I'm not that far-sighted when reading fiction and, unlike many mystery readers I've met, not good at guessing the murderer. Interestingly, a lot of libraries didn't have this book when we book group readers went to the library to try to get it; I think that this historical fiction was a little bit of a departure for Wingate. Wingate has won a Christy award.

I got the impression that several members of the group enjoyed the book even while recognizing some of its weaknesses, because it had a lively plot told in a suspenseful way and wasn't too challenging.

There were a couple of other things that made an impression on me. The primary point of the story is that children were treated as if they were commodities; however, there was also abuse of various kinds, including sexual abuse. I initially felt so uncomfortable with this, and even described it as "lurid" to someone to whom I was explaining the book; but, a few days after that conversation I was hanging laundry on the line and listening to the radio and heard a story about sexual abuse of Australian orphans, and this caused me to remember stories of child sexual abuse in Ireland and in our own country, and I realized that what I viewed as sensationalism was really commonplace.

I liked the setting at the beginning of the novel. I didn't know that folks lived on the river. I found that interesting.

War and Peace (BBC, 2015)

Really enjoyed this Andrew Davies-penned adaptation of Tolstoy's novel about the French invasion during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.I love costume dramas, and this one has a fine cast, but what I love most about it are Lily James' and Paul Dano's performances. Paul Dano plays Pierre, who is at the center of the story, and who is perhaps a character who is somewhat aubiographical. Pierre is a self--effacing sort, and the "natural" (illegitimate) son of a wealthy nobleman. Unexpectedly, Pierre inherits his father's title and estate. This sudden change in his circumstances is a bit overwhelming for Pierre, and he is persuaded to make a marriage to a woman who is beautiful, popular and well-connected, but who does not love Pierre and only agrees to marry him because he is rich and she has no money of her own.

The woman Pierre does love is named Natasha. They have been part of the same social set since Pierre was a child, and she eventually meets and falls in love with Andrei, Pierre's great friend.

Meanwhile, Russia fights Napoleon as an ally of Austria. Later, Napoleon invades Russia. The war is a frightful experience for all of Pierre's friends. Pierre himself, although once an admirer of Napoleon, has changed his opinion and goes to the battlefield, hoping for  a chance to assassinate the French general. Instead, he becomes a prisoner of war and is forced on a death march led ed by the French army. Pierre is rescued by Russian soldiers, but so many of Pierre's acquaintance have perished or lost their property that Pierre's world after the war is shrunken and somber. Pierre's attempts to grapple with first, social justice in his own country and in the larger world, and his struggle the assimilate the trauma of the war, are at the heart of this novel.

As the miniseries ended, I found myself feeling that there was something so familiar about this story - and then I realized that it reminded me of Voltaire's Candide.