This month in BookTrib, we are celebrating women’s fiction titles that showcase stories that feature mountains or woods, and what is encountered there. Maybe a wild animal or a body, or perhaps in this unfamiliar landscape you face your fears, discover your independence, and find peace at last. Mountains are to climb up and scale down. Woods are to lead us into the unknown. Take us with you; drag us out of our houses and backyards into huge vistas or shadowy trees.
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Black Forrest by Linda Hughes
Some things are better left unsaid but secrets are irresistible.
When ninety-five-year-old Granny Gertie gathers her descendants together at her cottage in the woods, she tells her lurid life story set in the Black Forest of Germany. They think the old girl has gone batty. Eventually, however, they overcome their horror and become inspired by their matriarch’s heroic determination to save her family, which resulted in their very existence.
She tells them of her husband, a maniacal Nazi when World War II raged around her. With three of her children snatched away into oblivion, Gerta Gruber was determined to save her other children. Garnering a cunning strength she never knew she possessed, she does things she never imagined. Prostitution. Espionage. Murder. She would allow nothing to stop her from protecting her babies from the ravages of war.
Love & Stones by Sallianne Hines
Set in the northern prairie and in the Rocky Mountains, the sweeping landscape and powerful weather impact horsewoman Cathryn McNeil and the choices she makes as she navigates a second coming-of-age in her vintage years. Cathryn wants to believe in happily-ever-after, Jane Austen style. But a twice-divorced children’s therapist whose heart is buried in a graveyard of loss is an unlikely heroine.
Stuck in a small prairie town, she’s resigned to her secluded life until she meets polo player Jack Stone at a funeral. They’re drawn together by a mutual love of horses and the land, but his hot and cold behavior and a family secret involving another woman cause her to question if he can be the hero she seeks.
When fate offers a second chance, she sets out to conquer the challenges of nature and human folly to free herself from the past. But has she misread too many novels?
Rock Bottom, Tennessee by Kimberly Nixon
The Four Winds meets Blind Tiger in this tale based on a real-life account of the author’s grandmother and set during Prohibition Era Appalachian Tennessee in the early 1900s, where the landscape and mountain community become characters of the story. Born on the wrong side of the mountain on her grandfather’s farm, Ruby Sullivan knows poverty and abuse and will do anything to escape her surroundings.
Joseph, a dedicated teacher hires Ruby as his assistant when two schoolhouses merge. His family, one of the more prosperous on the mountain, surrounded him with love and support and encourage him to find happiness with a family of his own class.
Leon, a former farm hand on Ruby’s grandfather’s farm and her childhood friend, is on his way toward a life of crime, and he wants Ruby to join him.
As these two men weave in and out of Ruby’s life, she searches for worthiness and belonging but makes a series of bad decisions, which could cause her life to tumble out of her control.
California Sister by Gloria Mattioni
Claire Waters, an Italian-born, Los Angeles mystery writer, receives a cheery letter from India sent by her sister Ondina who spent her Christmas holidays there before returning to Bergamo, Italy. But the premonition of incumbent doom hangs over her as she hikes with her dog in the Santa Monica Mountains. Claire returns after finding a fresh mountain lion paw print, its gamey scent still lingering in the morning air.
Arriving home, she receives a call from Italy informing her that her healthy and vibrant sister just suffered a brain hemorrhage and is fighting for her life. Claire arrives in Italy to find Ondina in a coma. After she wakes up, Claire is faced with the first mystery she’s unable to solve. Would her non-verbal sister want to go on struggling, severely damaged as she is, or end her suffering? Forsaking her career, Claire remains at Ondina’s side, only taking breaks to hike alone in the woods of the Orobic Alps, trying to hold herself together for her sister. But it will take a year before Claire can surrender enough to really hear her silent sister.
