Books Completed in June 2026

 A Little History of the United States, James West Davidson
Just what it says: a 300-page summary of the "significant bits" of the history of the United States. It's a nice basic history in a chatty style that imparts information for those who don't want to do a deeper dive. The only thing that bugged me was that this is the second book of US history that credits the beginning of the textile industry to Francis Lowell, who eventually did found the mill towns in Lowell, Massachusetts. It states that Lowell, a Boston merchant, came from England with plans in his head for the first looms. Rank heresy, says this Rhode Islander! Samuel Slater was the man who first came to the United States (Pawtucket, Rhode Island) with "plans in his head" for spinning machines and looms, way before Lowell.

 Murder on Wall Street, Victoria Thompson
Hayden Norcross, a prominent Wall Street investment banker, is murdered in his office, and former gangster Jack Robinson soon arrives at the detective agency of Frank Malloy, asking him to investigate the death. Jack is married to Jocelyn, a wealthy young woman who was raped by Norcross and then spurned, and they are now awaiting the birth of the child fathered by her rapist. Robinson believes someone will try to pin the murder on him.

Malloy and his wife Sarah Brandt, who still works as a midwife, are soon embroiled in Norcross' sordid lifestyle, which includes the rape of other women. Helped by Sarah's society parents, who can go places Malloy cannot, they try to untangle the deceit and violence of Norcross' life. There's also an amusing subplot about Frank's partner Gino, still recovering from injuries incurred in the previous mystery, planning to take Maeve, Sarah's part-time nursemaid and Malloy's part-time secretary, to his parents' house for dinner. Usually unflappable Maeve is unsure about what will happen with Gino's volatile family, especially his mother.

 Oh Say Can You See: Unexpected Anecdotes About American History, John Whitcomb & Claire Whitcomb
A book of short anecdotes from American history, from Presidential trivia to little-known facts about battles, colonial schooling, Western foibles, and others. A perfect "bathroom book" for history lovers.

 The Journal of C.J. Jackson, A Dust Bowl Migrant (My Name is America), William Durbin
Considering this is a children's/young adult book, this is a pretty grim but realistic portrayal of a family of "Okies" during the Dust Bowl era. The Jackson family's farm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, is slowly dying from drought and low prices. Finally C.J.'s dad sells out and Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, C.J., and his four brothers and sisters set out in Jackson's old car across the western desert to get to California where they hear there are jobs for farm workers.

The road is hard, they are treated with bigotry, and when they get to California, campsites are dirty and smelly. Think of this as a kid's version of The Grapes of Wrath, although things end up okay for the family. If you want an eye-opening view of life for Dust Bowl farmers, this is a good start.

 America's Jubilee, Andrew Burstein
I particularly waited to read this for the semiquincentennial, since it's about the celebrations of 1826, the semicentennial. I guess I was expecting something different, like a portrait of how people lived. There are aspects of this in this volume, which opens when the Marquis Lafayette returns to the United States for a tour of the country in his old age, having survived the more brutal French Revolution. There are also profiles of John Quincy Adams, the last of the old guard, and of Andrew Jackson, the candidate of the common man, and the last two chapters do focus on how the semicentennial was celebrated and also how the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, both on July 4, 1826, were addressed.

The other chapters are a little odd: one about a man named William Wirt, who wrote a popular biography of Patrick Henry and another about Eliza Foster, a writer (and daughter  of a writer) who produced two seminal books of what we would now call historical fiction, Saratoga and Yorktown. Another covers the migration to the Ohio country. I gleaned some new information from this history, but it was a bit of a slog.

 The Someday Garden, Ashley Poston
Sophie Drear and Harriett Fisher were best friends on a mission when they first saw Lilymoor House, a beautiful old home surrounded by marvelous gardens, and fell in love with the place. They promised to come back together another time. Now Sophie is back, at least, helping to revitalize the property after the widow of the original owner grows too old to keep it up. Anchored in her suddenly rocky life by working in gardens, Sophie is enjoying her work, her co-workers who are equally invested in reviving the beautiful grounds, and the unconventional owner, Eula. Then one day she finds a door she's never seen before in one of the walls, and inside is a frustrated man named Rus who can't go beyond the gate.

This is a magical book about friendship, love, clinging to old memories while not going ahead in life, being joyful in old age, fraternal relationships, old wounds, and new love. A lovely riff on Burnett's The Secret Garden. I was in tears by the end.

 The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Kirby Larson
Thirteen-year-old Piper Davis lives in Seattle with her widowed father, a minister; her older sister Margie; and her older brother Hank. Pastor Davis is the head of a Baptist church where most of the parish is Japanese; the Davises love their Japanese neighbors, and the congregation has perfect trust in Pastor Davis. So it is a blow when, after Hank joins the Navy and is shipped out to the Hawaiian Islands, Pearl Harbor is attacked, and suddenly the family is supposed to consider their friends their enemies. Shocked when all their neighbors, many of them American-born, are shipped off to internment camps, but the biggest shock is Piper's when Reverend Davis moves to one of the camps to care for his flock and brings her with him. Although she loved her friends, Piper is furious when taken away from her school and non-Japanese friends—until she sees what they are up against in the dirty, disorganized camp.

Larson based Pastor Davis on the real-life Reverend Emery Andrews, who did indeed go to serve his Japanese flock in an internment camp. An eye-opener if you've only read one or two lines about internment camps in history class.

 The Last Empty Places, Peter Stark
What a grand book! Stark's book is part travelogue to four different places: northern Maine, western Pennsylvania, southeast Oregon, and the desert of New Mexico. Using satellite photos, he finds the four darkest spots on a US map, and then explores the areas—in Maine and New Mexico with his wife and kids, and alone in the other places—and the history of the empty places, which turn out not to be so empty at all; in fact, they're all teeming with life, both human and animal, and history. What happened to the French in Canada...in the first frontier in Pennsylvania...on the landscapes of the west that inspired John Muir...and in the Native American settlements of the southwest?

The parts with his family are especially enjoyable, but the entire book is a look at history you never hear about, especially during the French and Indian War. I learned a lot more about the French settlers from this book than in any other. Warning: there is one specific paragraph about a woman being tortured that might disturb a younger reader.

 The Ever-After Bird, Ann Rinaldi
I usually enjoy Rinaldi books (except for her book about Native Residential Schools), and this one was no exception. Cecilia "CeCe" McGill's father died for his abolitionist beliefs, and teen CeCe didn't particularly care about his efforts at all. She finds she may have to care: her new guardian is her Uncle Alex, a doctor and ornithologist, and he's about to take her on a tour of Southern plantations in search of the rare scarlet ibis—the bird enslaved people call "the ever-after bird," because if they see it, they believe they will be set free. In reality, Uncle Alex is also an abolitionist who gives enslaved people advice to get to safety. And CeCe and Uncle Alex's Black assistant Earline are going to take part in Uncle Alex's dangerous game by posing as Alex's selfish ward and her servant to throw the plantation owners off his trail. CeCe is shocked by how easy it is for her to get into the role of being a slave-owner—and too soon she discovers the terrible treatment of the enslaved on the plantations they visit.

Rinaldi based the story on a real-life ornithologist who distributed maps and escape information in the ante-bellum South, and admits that she "whitewashed" the already violent portrayal of plantation slaves' lives so it was fit for a young adult book. What she does portray is pretty graphic as it is: this is not a book for young children.