Ha. I like your perspective on Bev and Lena. Your review of Heartwood was good. And it’s a book that comes back to you afterwards — the characters. Lena and Bev figured big into the imagination. Glad you enjoyed it.

Now that I’ve finished Heartwood, I reread your post on it. Bev was definitely my favorite character, but Lena held my interest, she reminds me of people I know, maybe a little bit of me in there, maybe more than I’d like there to be. I found her very sympathetic, whereas Bev was straight up a hero!

There is a Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach Detachment in Norco. The grounds it is on has a very interesting history (that I wish I had known when we worked there). It was originally a 700-acre resort hotel complex which was turned into a Naval Hospital in 1941. Glen and I worked for a contractor for GIDEP, the Government Data Exchange Program which coordinated shared technical data between the armed forces and their industry partners. And GIDEP still exists. I cannot believe that.

My husband at the time worked at March Air Force Base near Riverside (a B-52 pilot).

Yep the books are fairly short. I like reading on planes. I usually get much done locked in like that, lol. I bet you do too.
Luckily I still have a good month before DC … as I’m not organized yet. The mid-Atlantic area is pretty in the fall. I hope you have a great trip!

Hi Tracy, I just got back from the beach in California … where I was a week. It was a bit of a whirlwind returning. But I enjoyed being there. Interesting that you spent some time in Newport in the 1970s. We probably started going to the beach in Orange County in the later 1970s. You said that Norco was a military base in Calif. right? Cool you were in Riverside, I was in Redlands back then.
Kitamura is an interesting writer. A bit different, her protagonists are a bit mysterious.
Thx for the flower ID … interesting to hear the photo was of Yarrow. Pretty nice looking. I think I was thinking of lantana since the monarch butterflies at the beach seemed to be going crazy for the lantana in my mother’s garden. I like going back and reading your comments in regards to my comments left on your posts. It’s always informative. Thanks. Enjoy your weekend.

Hi Jeanie, yep it was so nice to be at the beach for a week. I’m back home now, but I really enjoyed it and the ocean was great for some swims. I hope you are enjoying your days at the lake and that your days at pretty. Cheers!

Audition sounds good, I will look into it, or maybe something else by Kitamura. And Tilt also sounds worth a read.

I left a further comment for you on my Monthly Reading post for July, that I finally identified the flower at the bottom of that post, with the help of google. It is Yarrow (or achillea millefolium) and a few years back I actually planted some in my back fenced-in area, so I should have recognized it. But mine were yellow.

Good to know they are short reads–maybe good plane books!

Safe travels to DC–definitely looking forward to experiencing fall in that part of the country.