Welcome to the May 2026 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!
If you have a bourbon aficionado or someone planning to visit the bourbon trail in your life, Big Whiskey: Featuring Kentucky Bourbon, Tennessee Whiskey, the Rebirth of Rye, and the Distilleries of America’s Premier Spirits Region by Carlo DeVito, may make a great gift. (As I’m writing this, the Amazon hardcover is a whopping 58 percent off!) My husband has been referring to the book and mentioned that he would’ve liked to have had it when we did a portion of the Kentucky bourbon trail with our family in 2024. The book includes interviews, histories and facts, and color photographs.
I began reading In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden but, unfortunately, have been pulled in some other directions. It’s a shame, because I’m enjoying this inside look at Brede Abbey. Successful career woman Philippa Talbot enters the abbey, giving the reader a glimpse of real, unvarnished life within the abbey. This is a favorite of Franciscan Mom, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for it and picked up a copy at a local used bookstore last summer.
The Curse He Chose by Sister Allison Regina Gliot, FSP, is a Young Adult vampire novel that takes full advantage of the themes of redemption, immortality, and the value of life to explore sin, salvation, and the Eucharist. The back matter includes a glossary, prayers, and a comparison of vampire lore and Catholic fact. In this first book of the In Aeternum trilogy, Elizabeth meets a vampire (whom she dubs Christopher), and their entanglement puts her life in jeopardy. While her affection for him grows, so does her vulnerability as other vampires enter the fray.
Word on Fire makes quality products, and The Riddle of the Tongue Stones: How Blessed Nicolas Steno Uncovered the Hidden History of the Earth by Thomas Salerno is no exception. I knew nothing of Blessed Nicolas, and found his biography, blended with the history of natural sciences, fascinating. Presented as a sort of field guide with illustrations throughout the book, The Riddle of the Tongue Stones is a saint biography, a science text, and an adventure wrapped into one. Half the family has read this little book already.
My oldest son spent most of his reading time last month working his way through Shelby Foote’s 850+ page The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville. Foote’s experience in writing fiction was evident from the first pages in how he relates the early battles of the war. Detailed and heavily researched, it is considered a classic. From an outsider’s perspective, I’m impressed with how highly it and two subsequent volumes are rated on Amazon, especially as a history of a sometimes still-contentious war.
My high-school daughter needed something (physically) lighter to take on an overnight trip than the nonfiction book she’s been reading, so I handed her Rhonda Oritz’s In Pieces. In post-revolutionary Boston, Molly Chase, plagued by the trauma of her father’s suicide, is taken in by her friends the Robbs. Her longtime friend Josiah Robb, a sailor, wants to marry Molly, but a variety of obstacles stand in their way, from gossips to bullies. My daughter had a Revolutionary War phase she never really got over and has enjoyed what she’s read so far. The third book in this series just became available, so I may re-read books one and two this summer.
As she finishes out her senior year, my daughter has also been reading plays in her American Literature class. She is just finishing A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Blanche DuBois finds herself in a bad spot and moves in with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley, with whom she has a lot of conflict. However, she cannot escape her troubled past and her many lies that are slowly revealed.
Fences by August Wilson is set in 1950s Pittsburgh. Troy Maxon played Negro league baseball, but his unfulfilled dreams—in baseball and in life—have left him bitter, and it tears him and his family apart. My daughter thought this play was good!
In her religion class, my middle-school daughter read Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, a book I read many years ago. My daughter acknowledged this powerful retelling of the author’s experience during the 1994 Rwanda genocide was difficult to read, and I could tell that it left an impression on her. Ilibagiza was among eight women huddled together in a small bathroom for 91 days while killers hunted them. The story is both sobering and inspiring.
When she was looking for something to read during downtime at theater rehearsals, I handed my daughter a book that had been gathering dust on our shelf for a while: Chiara: A Story of Saint Clare of Assisi by Madeline Pecora Nugent. This novelization of the life of Saint Clare, a follower of Saint Francis, works well as a biography with many historical notes, but is less readable as a novel. My daughter had trouble keeping track of the many characters, especially as their names changed when they entered religious life.
The Eighth Day by Dianne K. Salerni is described as “exciting” and “pulse-pounding,” but my daughter didn’t care much for this novel she called “weird.” An additional day is discovered between Wednesday and Thursday, and some people, “Transitioners,” can live in all eight days. But one teenage girl, Evangeline, a descendant of the wizard Merlin, lives only in the eighth day. Plot holes and a lack of background information kept my daughter from enjoying it. Also, if you are unfamiliar with Arthurian legend, she said you may struggle to understand it.
My youngest son is the final child in the family to read Treachery and Truth by Katy Huth Jones. This short novel on the life of St. Wenceslaus is a family favorite. If you’ve been holding out on getting a copy for yourself or your children, grab one now as it may soon become unavailable. The story of this Bohemian saint is told from the point of view of his servant Poidivin.
The Thief and the Beanstalk by P. W. Catanese is a children’s fantasy novel that explores what happens to the next person—after Jack—to climb the fairytale beanstalk. Nick and a pack of thieves break into Jack’s home and Nick has a chance to climb the beanstalk himself. My son hasn’t finished this one yet, so he’s reserving judgment.
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