Books Spanning a Character’s Lifetime

Book Summary

This novel opens in present-day California shortly after Eleanor’s death. She has left behind a voice recording for her two adult children – Byron and Benny. She’s also left them a traditional Caribbean black cake that she tells them to share “when the time is right.”

Her children, it turns out, only know a small part of their mom’s life story. Posthumously, Eleanor is finally ready to share her truth so that Byron and Benny can truly know and understand their family history.

As the story unfolds, everything that her children thought they knew about their lineage and themselves will be rocked to the core, and by the time they finally share the black cake, another person will be joining them at the table.

Book Summary

Although this book is classified as historical fiction, it’s based on a larger-than-life real woman with an equally large heart. In her childhood, Majorie worked on gluing cereal boxes together for her father, the creator of Grape-Nuts, followed by the successful Post cereal empire. His company led the family to extreme wealth, but Majorie wasn’t content to sit at home as American royalty.

While entertaining the rich and famous was part of her life, she also wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Her extraordinary life included everything from outrunning Nazis to serving the homeless during the Great Depression. She was also married four times and built impressive real estate along the way, including now-infamous Mar-a-Lago.

Book Summary

Throughout her life, Doris has documented the people she encounters in the same address book. Now, at 96 and living alone in Sweden, she begins looking back through the address book, especially at all those whom she has crossed out one by one as they die. In her bittersweet trip down memory lane, she reflects on those who entered her life for various reasons and seasons, each making a mark on who she would become.

Doris sets out to document her life, from working as a maid in Sweden, to modeling in Paris before escaping WWII, to searching for a lost love in Manhattan. By documenting her personal and family past, she hopes to help her only living relative, a grandniece named Jenny.

Book Summary

Three friends – dubbed “The Supremes” by pals – have been meeting at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat diner in Plainview, Indiana since their high school days in the tumultuous 1960s.

For more than four decades, they’ve been by each other’s side through life’s ups and downs and the book follows their evolving friendships over the years. Now, Clarice struggles to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband’s humiliating infidelities. Barbara Jean is rocked by the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair. And fearless Odette is about to embark on the most terrifying battle of her life.

Book Summary

This book is told in the form of a letter written by 100-year-old Violeta as she reflects back on her life and the tragedies she overcame. Violeta was born in 1920, as the world was trying to recover from World War I, and just as the Spanish Flu began to take hold in South America. But that won’t be the only pandemic she encounters during her long life.

From the Great Depression to the fight for women’s rights and from drug cartels to lovers, this fictional but raw book looks into all aspects of Violeta’s lifetime.

Book Summary

In 1993, Mallory inherited a beach cottage in Nantucket and decided to embrace the unexpected gift and move to the island full-time. Shortly after, she hosts a bachelor party for her brother and meets his friend from college, Jake.

After things go wrong for other attendees, Mallory and Jake are left alone for the rest of the weekend. They have undeniable chemistry. After watching the classic movie, Same Time Next Year, they decide to continue getting together one weekend every summer, no matter what.

As the title suggests, the book spans 28 years of these secret meetings, one chapter per year from 1993-2020. You’ll keep the pages turning to find out how their lives change individually and together each year as Mallory and Jake go from college through career, love, and loss.

The chapters start with a fun recap of what was happening in the world each year, and you’ll be transported through time as their lives move forward.

Book Summary

Even the juiciest Hollywood tell-alls have nothing on this royal memoir from Anne Glenconner, who was a friend and official Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret.

The book covers her full life to date, from teenage years through her late 80s. While Princess Margaret is involved in some of the stories, the book is not directly focused on the royal family. Instead, it’s all about Anne’s unbelievable life, which was marked by both incredible privilege and extreme tragedy that overlaps some of the major events of the 20th century, including the war on drugs and the AIDs epidemic.

Book Summary

This historical fiction follows the life of Maud Baum, wife to the author of Wizard of Oz. She was raised by a suffragette mother in the late 1800s, attended college when it was rare for girls to be educated, and then met Frank. He was a big dreamer in a time when creativity was not praised as a career path.

The couple’s life was fascinating, even before he wrote Wizard of Oz. Finding Dorothy switches between Maud’s earlier years and her quest in 1939 at age 77 to make sure the Wizard of Oz movie stayed true to the book. She becomes determined to protect the actress playing Dorothy, Judy Garland.

Book Summary

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, their mother dies in childbirth and their father disappears, leaving the brothers orphaned.

The twins are adopted by two other surgeons from the hospital and come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, but it’s love rather than politics that comes between them.

After finishing med school, Marion flees to America to intern at an overcrowded and underfunded hospital in NYC. Eventually, the past catches up with Marion. He must turn to the two men he trusts least – his father and his brother.

Book Summary

It’s 1963 in Greenwich Village when Charles, Lily, James, and Nan meet. Charles was destined to follow in his father’s footsteps – a history professor at Harvard – until a lecture about faith led him instead into ministry. James comes from a challenging Chicago family with an alcoholic father and an anxious mother. Charles and James cross paths when they are both hired to lead the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times. Their personal differences make it challenging for them to work together.

Charles meets Lily, a fiercely intelligent woman who tells him she’ll never believe in God. Although they don’t make any sense together, he can’t help falling in love. James is drawn to Nan, who grew up in a devout Mississippi family as the daughter of a minister and debutante. James is full of skepticism, and Nan’s constant faith helps to guide him.

The Dearly Beloved follows these two couples through many years of love, friendship, jealousy, and forgiveness. Together, these couples face life’s many challenges, from marriage and parenthood to death and grieving and everything in between. The novel explores faith, motherhood, women’s liberation, friendship, and even autism. You’ll initially be immersed in the early 1960s – a time caught between conservatism and revolution – and then, as the story progresses, you’ll see the four main characters set against the backdrop of major changes in New York City.

Book Summary

Born with ocular albinism, Sam Hill is a young boy whose rare red eyes cause problems from the moment his mother enrolls him at the Our Lady of Mercy school. 

Labeled “Hell Boy,” he is bullied not only by his classmates but also given a hard time by the nun who is the principal at his elementary school. Eventually, Sam finds the new best friend he desperately needs in Ernie Cantwell, the only African American boy in his class, and years later in a fiercely individual girl named Mickie.

As an adult, Sam is a respected ophthalmologist moving through life with Ernie and Mickie still by his side. His world is about to be upturned when he’s unexpectedly reunited with the biggest schoolyard bully from his past.

Book Summary

When the author of this memoir was 16, he went to get his driver’s license and was shocked to learn that he was brought to the United States outside the legal channels. He came to the US from the Philippines at 12 and had no documentation from his home country.

Despite his rough start to life, Jose became a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. However, that journey came with many challenges, including the overwhelming feeling that he didn’t have a home. His memoir covers his first 25 years of highs and lows in America.

Book Summary

Evelyn Hugo lived a glamorous and scandalous life, but doesn’t like to talk about it and has become reclusive after leaving her career. When the movie icon is finally ready to talk about her time in show business, she picks an unknown reporter to log her personal history, but why?

You’ll slowly unwrap Evelyn’s life from the 1950s – 1980s as she chronicles her past life and relationships, including the seven husbands she had along the way. As the book covers so much of her life, it moves quickly and will keep you engaged and entertained for hours.

Book Summary

While fleeing Russia in 1913, young Malka Treynovsky is determined to get her family to the United States – the land of opportunity and dreams. After arriving via Ellis Island, her visions of a better life are quickly tattered when the Lower East Side isn’t easy to survive as a Russian Jewish family.

Over the next 70 years, Malka transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, “The Ice Cream Queen.” She creates her own empire, and her story involves notable moments throughout American history.

While her public persona as the Ice Cream Queen seems endearing, it’s largely a facade for a more complex, less-likable woman who was shaped by the challenges of her childhood.

Book Summary

Despite witnessing the absolute worst of humanity during seven years in concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Eddie believes he is the happiest man on earth. He wrote this memoir as his 100th birthday approached and he reflected back on the entirety of his life.

Book Summary

In under 200 pages, author Laird Hunt covers the entire life of the main character Zorrie. It begins with Zorrie in a modest home before the death of her parents. After being orphaned a second time when her aunt passes away, Zorrie drifts through Depression-era Indiana. She even spends a short time as a radium watch painter.

Eventually, she finds a home in the community of Hillisburg. As Zorrie ages, you’ll see many events of the 20th century through the eyes of a woman in a small midwestern town.

Book Summary

Few names are as synonymous with chic glamour as Coco Chanel. However, all your opinions of the woman who created the classic little black dress could change after reading this historical fiction account of her entire life.

From her humble beginnings as an orphan to her determination to keep her atelier afloat during WW2, this book details the decisions that led to her lasting name recognition. 

Book Summary

This unique novel follows approximately 30 years in the life of Eva Thorvald and follows her journey to become the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club. Rather than seeing Eva’s life through her own eyes, everything we know about Eva is told to us through the filter of another character. 

In a series of eight short stories that will ultimately become intertwined, we see Eva evolve. The stories are told by a wide variety of people, from her father to her first boyfriend, and even a jealous rival, who each introduce their own perspectives and prejudice to Eva’s life story. 

Additionally, each of the stories also revolves around a single dish of food, making Kitchens of the Great Midwest a great book that spans a lifetime, but also an excellent foodie novel!

Book Summary

The night before Oona’s 19th birthday, on New Year’s Eve 1982, she’s struggling with a big decision. Should she go all-in on her commitment to her band and boyfriend or follow through with a long-time plan to study economics in London with her best friend?

Before she can go down either path, she wakes up on New Year’s Day. Except she’s now in the year 2014. Instead of being 19, Oona is suddenly 51. She continues to live her life out of order, traveling backward or forward each New Year, but never knowing what age she’ll be when she wakes up.

This is an interesting pick for the Lifetime of Reading Challenge because we don’t see Oona’s life progress in chronological order. Rather than seeing Oona’s life story as she ages, we see snippets of Oona at different stages of life without yet knowing the full story of how she got there.

Book Summary

Growing up in a picture-perfect house in Detroit in the 1950s, Jo and Bethie are Jewish sisters who each have a clearly defined role in their family.

Jo is the bookish tomboy with a strong sense of fairness, and Bethie is the good girl who enjoys the power that comes from her beauty. The sisters come of age in the 1960s against the backdrop of free love, Vietnam, Woodstock, and feminism.

Good-girl Bethie becomes a wild child who is drawn to all things counterculture. On the other hand, Jo follows the expected path and becomes a young wife living in Connecticut – no part of which is true to herself. Through the decades, neither woman has been leading the life she really wants. Jo sees the world changing, but she’s a witness rather than a participant. Bethie endures many traumas and struggles with how the world sees her versus how she sees herself.

It will take many more years for both sisters to become their true selves finally, and even longer for them to find their way back to one another.