For the first time in a full year, we met in person! Weather was predicted to be nice and Laura volunteered her patio. We broke with our tradition of a Friday night book club and met on Sunday afternoon. We decided on a menu of light snacks as we were meeting in the middle of the afternoon.
The promised warm temperatures didn't quite materialize but, we had cozy blankets and the firepit going.
This was also the first meeting we have had in person since Terry's passing. We missed her but, we felt like she was making her presence through the birds that came to visit.
Our book this month was Jodi Picoult's "The Book of Two Ways." We have read several of her books and liked them, for the most part.
The protagonist of our story is Dawn Edelstein. Dawn is a Death Doula living with her physicist husband and teenage daughter. Before she married she was a graduate student living in Egypt with a fellow graduate named Wyatt.
The story opens with Dawn surviving a plane crash. As the accident is unfolding she finds she is not seeing her current life flash before her eyes but, her past life in Egypt with Wyatt. She finds herself not going home but to Egypt. The unfolding story could be a bit confusing as the time lines of the past merged with the present.
The Book of Two Ways was actually an ancient Egyptian funerary text that provided a map to the path that one takes in the afterlife. There are two roads that one can take, one by land and the other by water. This is the frame the author uses for Dawn to contemplate the two paths in her life; where they have taken her, where they are taking her. Dawn's present day profession as a Death Doula also mirrors her interest in the way the Ancient Egyptians dealt with death.
The book rated a 3.9 with one "I loved it" and one, "I almost loved it."
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