Kirjahaku

In this engaging travel memoir, Susan reminds the 85-year-old Jim of their 1992 adventure in northern Pakistan and Islamic western China -- a journey both harrowing and hilarious. A must-read for lovers of middle-age rejuvenation and discovery.They took off for Central Asia without really thinking it through. There was a highway after all, between Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and Kashgar, China. It would take them to the largest Sunday market in all of Asia.They were salaried professionals by day, but nurtured dreams of alternative lives: she, to write art-crime thrillers; he, to trade in art and antiquities. Traveling the ancient trade routes was their idea of romance.And so, they became strangers, alone together in a timeless landscape. Every day brought new challenges. And their lives were changed forever.

EVERY FAMILY NEEDS A LEGEND. And every legend needs an origin story. Kitty's People is a biographical novel, the intimate portrait of Kitty Flanagan from her youth as the daughter of Irish immigrants, through her years as a tragedy-plagued young mother and businesswoman, to her rise as woman-in-charge-confident, organized, fierce, and supremely generous. Kitty is the author's grandmother and a role model for our times.Her story lies at the heart of a multi-generational family saga, revealed in oral histories and archival research. Despite their talents and hard work, the Flanagans in America find themselves in an epic battle: the goals of prosperity and loving family life pitted against the forces of disease, organized crime, alcoholism, fires, a wicked stepmother, abortion, and cold-blooded murder. The Flanagan saga includes the Keville family, the Barrett family, and the Curran family-all energetic Irish Catholics striving to book their passage to the promised land.What is the setting? The Midwest The story moves quickly from Holy Angels parish on the southside of Chicago to the utopian community of Leclaire, Illinois, the company town of N.O. Nelson Manufacturing, celebrated in the 1894 New York World report by journalist Nellie Bly. The saga continues in St. Louis, in the northside neighborhoods around Holy Rosary Church and in the westside neighborhoods around the Easton Avenue business corridor.How is this book a historical novel? The story begins during the Gilded Age, when the working class flirted with the ideas of socialism. Then, Kitty grows up to run the Barrett family grocery business. Selling meat and dry goods in a corner store locates the family at the heart of retail innovation in the early twentieth century. But World War I, the Spanish Flu pandemic, Prohibition, and the Great Depression generate a roller coaster of challenges to the grocery business. Agriculture and transportation throughout the Midwest also suffer the devastating effects of heat waves, pipe-exploding cold spells, and massive river floods.Although the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair celebrates the dawn of twentieth-century scientific progress and technological innovation, the early decades still had no antibiotics, no clue how to manage diabetes, no resources outside of institutionalization for children with brain injuries, no effective birth control, and-despite women's suffrage-no patience for a woman taking charge of her own destiny.Are there love stories as well? The romance between Moses Flanagan and Maggie Keville is where it all begins. The rules and expectations of Irish culture and the Catholic faith play large in the vignettes of romance throughout their extended family. The Flanagans' daughter Nellie defies the rules. Their daughter Kitty rewrites them.It is easy to fall in love with Kitty Flanagan. Despite the times, despite her losses, she learns to carry on. She discovers how to keep her head in the game despite a world that keeps slinging trouble her way.You know Kitty and her people. They are your ancestors, fleeing the Old Country for the promised land of America, hounded by death and disaster. Yet... here we are. They persisted. They endured. They found love and laughter. They are the salt of the earth.

Set in 1992, it starts with murder in Manhattan. Before long, Nellie Mackenzie and Taylor Jackson find themselves at opposite ends of the Karakoram Highway. Nellie is headed north through tribal Pakistan, where vengeance killings are a way of life. Jackson is headed south along the desert routes of western China, where smuggling national treasures is a capital offense. Nellie and Jackson are antiquities dealers. They were once husband and wife. Now the unsolved murder lies between them.Making their way across the vast historic landscapes of Central Asia, their companions are murderers, lovers, and a treasure trove of Tang Dynasty statuary. Everyone on this modern Silk Road is seeking justice for betrayals they've suffered. No one knows where their sense of honor will take them. Death lurks at every turn.Susan Barrett Price researched this novel during her own road trip through Central Asia, traveling the borderline between wonder and insanity.