Love Lettering

Second only to bookstores, stationers are my other happy place. Whether I’m in Ann Arbor or Wenatchee, Dallas or Seattle, I can spend hours perusing greeting cards, pencil bags, and crafty accessories. If I’m stuck waiting somewhere in between books, I simply search for “bullet journal” on Pinterest and the minutes fly by. Therefore, I was delighted to come across a novel of letters in Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn. After all the only thing more romantic than a love letter is the ink and paper with which it was crafted.

Graphic artist Meg has started to make a name for herself in designing custom planners and wedding invitations. She’s just hit a wall in her creative output when a former client reenters her life. Reid, a numbers guy, wants to know how she knew his previous  relationship would fail -due to a cleverly hidden message inked into the invites. After he disparages both her craft and her beloved adopted city, Reid compels Meg to show him what she loves about both. Together they explore various neighborhoods with a new eye on finding typefaces that play against type. Sharing these snapshots, as you might have guessed, also helps them see their friendship from a different angle. This light-hearted romance will make you smile. And may even have you hunting for that calligraphy book you bought that one time.  

"What good is an ark to a fish?"

Although it’s been several weeks since I read Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford, the final section has stuck with me. Now it almost seems like a premonition of the events of the past week in my home state:

“I pad around my house in the morning, turning on faucets and lights to assure myself that the apocalypse is still self-contained over a thousand miles away at my mother’s doorstep.”

Although power is slowly being restored, many Texans are still having to boil water, if they have water, for the next several days if not weeks. Once again a failure of leadership has neighbor helping neighbor, breweries distributing water, and grocery store chains giving away food.

In Ford’s novel, the events leading up to the apocalypse begin in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma in 1974. Justine, or Teeny, is growing up in a household of women, with her sisters, mother and grandmother. Despite the disapproval of her family’s conservative church, she contacts her father, since remarried, who offers to pick her up for a visit: “Life was spiritual warfare, and Six Flags would be no exception.” A date with a local boy leaves her pregnant, and Reney enters the world.

As the story progresses, we see Reney’s self-sufficiency emerge even has she holds a similar longing for a father figure. When Justine meets a jockey from Texas, Pitch offers the two a chance at a new start on his family’s ranch. However, the family pull is strong, and the women don’t completely sever ties with Justine’s mother. When Reney finds herself in an abusive relationship, she finally gets the courage to cut those ties with the knife of higher education.

Ultimately, it’s the end times that will pull her back.