We had a fun Zoom discussion of Yesteryear by Claire Caro Burke, our first group read! Thank you to everyone who came. I appreciate you! 🧡 Once it's processed, I'll post the AI summary of the discussion so others can join in the conversation. In the meantime, what are you reading this weekend? I'm still reading The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li.

Okay, I'll be honest. I picked this one up thinking I knew exactly what I was getting into. Another WWII novel. I'd read plenty. I thought I had it figured out. I did not have it figured out. The Ragged Edge of Night by Olivia Hawker is quietly devastating in the best possible way. Set in a small German town from 1942 to 1945, it follows Anton... a friar who loses his religious order when the Nazis shut it down. With everything crumbling around him, he answers a widow's newspaper ad. Elisabeth needs security for her children. He needs purpose. Their marriage starts as a transaction… and becomes something neither of them planned on. The writing? Oh my goodness. You can feel the cold of a German winter. The heaviness sitting over every meal, every conversation. And underneath it, the fragile warmth of a home where love is trying, carefully, to take root. What got me most was Anton's interior life. He's not a soldier. Not a hero in the conventional sense. He's a man haunted by guilt, wrestling with his faith, doing small faithful things in the dark. When a local priest pulls him into carrying resistance messages, he doesn't say yes for money or glory. He says yes because it feels like a calling. That distinction matters. It's the whole book, really. By the end, I saw him clearly as a quiet man, full of doubt, who chose hope anyway. And used that hope to fuel his courage, one small act at a time. And then I found out it's a true story. Olivia Hawker wrote about her husband's grandfather. The story had been told at family gatherings for many years. In her case, she heard it at a Thanksgiving dinner. "Opa and the bells," they called it. When the family learned she was a writer who specialized in historical fiction, they said: write it. She did her research. Found most of it was true. Changed very little. Her Author's Notes at the back of the book lay it all out — what was real, what she kept, and why. Actually, there's so much there I hope she writes about him again!

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/books/why-is-tiktok-in-this-book-from-2006.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260529&instance_id=176355&nl=the-morning&regi_id=99799684&segment_id=220643&user_id=d57aa70c9954253dea83741626028802

which is pretty weird. but i don't mind it

The winning date/time was Friday 29th May at 4pm Pacific. Thanks to everyone who voted. I'll post a Zoom link closer to the date. Here's my favourite time zone converter, if you need one: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/ I've finished reading the book (Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke) and I'll probably re-read at least some of it before our call. Has anyone else finished reading it?