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Read to Roam for December: "The Sisterhood" by Liza Mundy
Most of my Read to Roams are fiction: I relish the way a novel can sweep me to the bleak moors of Great Britain as a forlorn Jane Eyre looks for shelter on a cold night. Or to the fragrant canals of Kerala as Ammachi travels to her wedding in Abraham Verghese's exceptional "The Covenant of Water."
But this month's Read to Roam is non-fiction and it has loads of exotic destinations and international adventure.
"Sisterhood" by journalist and author Liza Mundy tells the "one step forward and two steps back" push that women made to transform the CIA for over five decades.
We meet brilliant and determined Heidi August who suffers through low-level grunt work until she takes a posting in Libya no one else wanted. Once there, she witnesses a deadly plane hijacking and vows to seek justice for the young American woman who is one of the hijacker's victims.
Lisa Harper, for whom marriage to a State Department official nearly derailed her career, until she proved her mettle again and again and finally rose to become the agency's first female division chief.
And the team of women analysts who went painstakingly back through piles and piles of intelligence to locate essential clues in tracking down Osama bin Laden as he hid in Pakistan years after 9/11.
Mundy writes: "The women were there all along, though the agency sought ways to suppress their voices and set them against one another, even as the male leaders relied on their loyalty, their skills at elicitation, their attention to detail and their insights."
Catch my interview with Mundy on February 2nd.
Pilgrimage to Patchett's Parnassus Bookstore
We're going to roam and read, sup and sing when we land in Nashville in late September. The itinerary for our pilgrimage to Ann Patchett's luscious bookstore is up and, girlfriends, this trip is HOT!
If you and your best friend would like to join me for this Chicks-Only adventure, find a moment to snail-mail or PayPal a deposit and I'll save a place for you.
https://www.sirensojourns.com/parnassus
Need a Last-Minute Gift? Books Never Disappoint.
Here are some of my favorite books AND your favorite books from 2023.
And If That's Not Enough, Here's More!
When Ron Charles of the Washington Post loves a book, I love a book. This is one of my favorite year-end lists.