The Magic of Ordinary Days is a historical fiction novel written by Ann Howard Creel. The story is set in the backdrop of World War II and follows the life of Livy Dunne, a young woman who finds herself pregnant after a brief affair with a soldier named Ray. Livy's father, who is a strict preacher, arranges for her to marry a kind, gentle stranger named Ray Singleton. Livy is initially reluctant about the arranged marriage, but gradually comes to appreciate Ray's kind and caring nature. As Livy settles into her new life on Ray's farm in rural Colorado, she begins to discover the magic in the ordinary, simple moments. During her time on the farm, Livy learns to embrace the beauty of nature and finds solace in working the land.
The Magic of Ordinary Days
Olivia Dunne, a studious minister’s daughter who dreams of becoming an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. But when an exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, she finds herself in a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding muchneeded friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp. When Olivia unwittingly becomes an accomplice to a crime and is faced with betrayal, she finally confronts her own yearnings and comes to understand what she truly believes about the nature of trust and love.
During her time on the farm, Livy learns to embrace the beauty of nature and finds solace in working the land. She develops a strong bond with Ray's sister, Martha, who becomes her confidante. Despite her initial reservations, Livy also starts to develop genuine feelings for Ray, and they slowly grow closer as they spend time together.
About The Magic of Ordinary Days
Olivia Dunne, a studious minister’s daughter who dreams of being an archaeologist, never thought that the drama of World War II would affect her quiet life in Denver. An exhilarating flirtation reshapes her life, though, and she finds herself banished to a rural Colorado outpost, married to a man she hardly knows. Overwhelmed by loneliness, Olivia tentatively tries to establish a new life, finding much-needed friendship and solace in two Japanese American sisters who are living at a nearby internment camp. When Olivia unwittingly becomes an accomplice to a crime and is faced with betrayal, she finally confronts her own desires. Beautifully written and filled with memorable characters, Creel’s novel is a powerful exploration of the nature of trust and love.
THE MAGIC OF ORDINARY DAYS
A YA author’s nicely written adult debut novel blends historical richness and a fine sense of place to tell the story of a woman’s developing love for her husband—and for his Colorado farmland—over the course of six months in 1944.
In wartime Denver, Olivia Dunne becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with a departing American soldier. With the help of a local church, her father arranges her marriage to Ray Singleton, a beet farmer in faraway La Junta. Olivia’s first days on the isolated farm are awkward, and Ray, a shy, reticent man of good intentions, isn’t very adept at small talk. Precluded from contributing anything useful to the running of the farm, whose harvests are cultivated in part by labor from the local internment camp, Olivia takes long solitary walks. During one of them she meets Rose and Lorelei Umahara, Japanese-Americans from California who have been evacuated to confinement in Colorado. Young, enthusiastic, and passionate about butterfly hunting, the sisters introduce Olivia to the thriving, emotionally rich life of the camp. She keeps her friendship with the girls secret; Ray, whose brother was killed at Pearl Harbor, displays no fondness for the Japanese who work his farm. Creel does a delightful job of evoking first the dreariness of the Singleton farm and Olivia’s unnerving loneliness, then the slow ripening of her affection for Ray, a simple but profoundly kind and gentle man. Rose and Lorelei, meanwhile, hint that they have begun dating a pair of American soldiers, and Olivia drives them to meet the men in secret. But the “soldiers” turn out to be German POWs escaping with the help of the sisters, who make Olivia an unwitting accomplice. The author gives her heroine a satisfying emotional depth, moving Olivia through phases of affection and disappointment with assured confidence before closing with a tranquil scene after the baby is born.
A light, precisely observed novel.
Pub Date: July 9, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-91027-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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MOONSTONE
THE BOY WHO NEVER WAS
by Sjón ; translated by Victoria Cribb ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
A hazy portrait of a desperate historical moment.
Award-winning novelist, poet, and Björk collaborator Sjón (From the Mouth of the Whale, 2008, etc.) takes direct aim at Icelandic conservatism in this slim, meditative novella about a gay teen in Reykjavik on the eve of the Spanish Flu, circa 1918.
The story opens with Máni Steinn, a 16-year-old boy, engaged in sex with an older man, a matter-of-fact scene handled with workmanlike precision by the author. “Without a word the man flings a crumpled bank note at him and hastens away in the direction of town,” Sjón writes. “The boy smoothes out the note and grins; there are two of them, a whole fifteen krónur.” Despite dabbling in prostitution, Máni leads a solitary existence. His only occasional companion is a motorcycle-riding tough girl named Sóla G, beloved to Máni because she resembles the famous French actress Musidora. The book itself is a love letter to the cinema, as Máni spends most of his waking hours enraptured in the black-and-white flickering images, even as the flu begins to cut down the people of Reykjavik in scores. When the boy contracts the illness, the novel succumbs to hallucinatory passages interspersed with foreboding images, a condition from which neither Máni nor the story ever fully recovers. One particularly eerie moment stands out, as Máni and Sóla G prowl the cinemas fumigating them with chlorine gas, dressed in black. “The greenish yellow gas that had lately felled young men on the battlefields of Europe now drifts and rolls through the picture houses of Reykjavik,” Sjón writes. The novel eventually closes its circle—the boy survives and grows into adulthood in England and becomes involved with the burgeoning surrealist film movement—but the novel’s real point is for Sjón to pay tribute to an uncle who died of AIDS in 1993, a fact that only appears in the novel’s very last line.
A hazy portrait of a desperate historical moment.
Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-3742-1243-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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DAUGHTER OF A DAUGHTER OF A QUEEN
by Sarah Bird ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
Rapturously imagined and shamelessly entertaining.
Lightly based on the true story of a freed female slave who posed as a man, joined the army, and served with the Buffalo Soldiers, this rollicking epic marches fearlessly from the Civil War South to the sunburned edge of the Western frontier.
"My real life, the one I was meant to have, did not start until an August night in 1864, three years into the war, when I watched the only world I'd ever known burn to the ground and met the man who was to be my deliverance and my damnation, the Yankee general Philip Henry Sheridan." In her 10th novel, Bird (Above the East China Sea, 2014, etc.) delivers a high-energy page-turner that combines vividly re-created historical figures and events with a wild mustang of a plot and an embattled secret love, the last of which fans will recognize as a specialty of this author. Very much like Onion in The Good Lord Bird, Cathy Williams successfully poses as a man to find her way out of the particular hell reserved for young black girls of this period. In fact, when we meet her, she has already gotten away with a diabolical plot to kill her owner as punishment for "interfering" with her little sister and has taken to wearing britches. When Sheridan's troops arrive to pillage whatever food and supplies are left on the plantation, they requisition Cathy as well, thinking she's a young man and just the right person to help their cook. Torn from her mother and sister, she is tossed in the back of a wagon to ride up to camp. In it she finds a mortally wounded black Yankee soldier with whom she falls hopelessly in love just before he expires and is tossed over the side. This author has no trouble keeping a crazy romance with a dead person going great guns while exploring the very real historical ironies of black soldiers sent to subdue Native American tribes. Meanwhile, the travails of this woman-pretending-to-be-a-man echo across the centuries.
Rapturously imagined and shamelessly entertaining.
Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-19316-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: St. Martin's
Heather ~*dread mushrooms*~'s Reviews > The Magic of Ordinary Days
I wanted to read this book after learning about the movie starring Skeet Ulrich and Keri Russell. Recently my library purchased the movie, and I decided to move the book up my TBR.
This book tells the story of Livvy, a young woman who gets in trouble with a soldier and has to enter a marriage of convenience with a young farmer. Ray is very shy and set in his ways, and Livvy feels stifled by the isolated community. She befriends two sisters from a nearby Japanese internment camp, and their friendships helps pass her days, as well as her amateur archaeological discoveries on the farm. Although Ray's feelings for her are quickly apparent (he was very lonely before her), it takes Livvy a while to warm up to him.
I ended up watching the movie first and liking it much better than the book, and I think that would have been the case even if I'd read the book first. I found the book boring, and I didn't like the writing. The story was pulled much tighter for the movie, and to me it flowed better. There wasn't much emotion in the book—it was a read-between-the-lines sort of thing—and this quiet kind of love story was more adequately conveyed by being able to see actors' faces (and better storytelling on the movie script's part).
Plus, the movie had Skeet Ulrich, who was so adorable I wanted to die.
So while I don't recommend the book, I do suggest watching the movie if this is the kind of story you like.
However, Livy's newfound happiness is threatened when news arrives that Ray is missing in action. Livy is devastated and fears for the worst. She gives birth to their son, and as she embraces motherhood, she also finds strength within herself to face the uncertainty of Ray's fate. As Livy struggles with her own emotions and the challenges of raising her son alone, she receives a letter from Ray, who is alive and well. He explains that he was held as a prisoner of war and that he will soon return home. Livy is overjoyed and eagerly awaits Ray's arrival. In the end, Livy and Ray are reunited, and they continue to build their life together on the farm. Livy realizes that sometimes the most ordinary moments can hold the most extraordinary magic, and she finally finds a sense of belonging and happiness in her new family. Overall, The Magic of Ordinary Days is a heartwarming story of love, resilience, and the power of ordinary moments to shape our lives. Through Livy's journey, the novel explores themes of finding beauty in simplicity, the strength of the human spirit, and the importance of embracing life's unexpected twists and turns..
Reviews for "Discover a Hidden Gem: Summary of "The Magic of Ordinary Days"
1. Anna Smith - 2 stars
I found "The Magic of Ordinary Days" to be quite disappointing. Although the author's writing style was engaging, I found the plot to be predictable and lacking depth. The characters felt one-dimensional and their relationships felt forced. Overall, I was hoping for a more memorable and thought-provoking read.
2. John Thompson - 1 star
I regretted picking up "The Magic of Ordinary Days" as it failed to capture my interest from start to finish. The story moved at a slow pace with little to no excitement or suspense. The main character was unrelatable and her decisions felt unrealistic. Additionally, the romance aspect was overly cliché and lacking any real emotional depth. I cannot recommend this book to anyone looking for a captivating read.
3. Sarah Johnson - 2 stars
"The Magic of Ordinary Days" was a letdown for me. While the premise seemed intriguing, the execution fell short. The writing style was overly descriptive, making the story drag on without adding any significant substance. The characters lacked development and their actions felt contrived. I had hoped for a more poignant and engaging tale, but unfortunately, this book did not deliver.
4. Michael Brown - 1 star
I struggled to find any enjoyment in "The Magic of Ordinary Days". The plot was uninteresting and failed to hold my attention. The pacing was slow and the story lacked any real depth or complexity. The romance felt forced and unrealistic, leaving me feeling indifferent towards the characters and their relationships. Overall, I found this book to be a dull and forgettable read.
5. Emily Davis - 2 stars
"The Magic of Ordinary Days" fell short of my expectations. The story felt predictable and lacked originality. The characters were underdeveloped and their motivations felt contrived. The romance aspect was disappointing, lacking any real chemistry between the characters. I was hoping for a more captivating and emotionally resonant narrative, but unfortunately, this book did not deliver.