Book Review
Basic Details:
Book Title: Honor in Concord
Subtitle: Seeking Spirit in
Literary Concord
Author:
Cathryn McIntyre
Genre: Memoirs
Part of a series?
Order in series:
Best read after earlier
books in series?
Available: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61302752-honor-in-concord
Overall
score:
I
scored this book 4/5
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Short
Summary of the book:
This is a memoir of sorts. Confusing in
places and interesting in others. We follow different characters at different
times in history and the present. It’s a nice read.
What
I liked about the book:
The different stories throughout the books.
What
I didn’t like about the book:
That it sometimes confused me a little.
My
favourite bits in the book:
The book was enjoyable.
My
least favourite bits in the book:
The confusing bits.
Any
further books in the series? Any more planned by this author?
This author has written a another memoir.
What
books could this be compared to and why?
It’s difficult to compare this book to any
others as I haven’t read any like this one before.
Recommendation:
In
summary, I would recommend this book for the following readers:
|
Children |
No |
|
Young
Adult |
Maybe |
|
Adult |
Yes |
If
you like your books filled with details about
literary history, hints of the paranormal and clairvoyance, this may be the
book for you.
Book
Description by Author:
In Honor in Concord, Cathryn McIntyre tells
the story of the first year she lived in the historic town of Concord,
Massachusetts in an antique home she calls "Quiet House" on a street
named for Henry David Thoreau. One day she sets out to record the images of
Concord's past that are always on her mind and what results is a fictional
story told within the pages of memoir in which the writers of mid-19th century
Concord (i.e., Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Alcott) are living new
lives in Concord in present day.
Honor in Concord is set at all the historic
locations in Concord, including The Old Manse, The Emerson's Home, Orchard
House, The Wayside and Walden Pond and there are short vignettes throughout the
story that open up like windows into Concord's literary past. One moment we see
Julie watching her young daughter performing at her dance recital and the next
we see her as Sophia Hawthorne walking in the yard of the Wayside as her
children run about in play and her husband, Nathaniel looks on. One moment we see
Sarah having a flirtatious lunch with Richard at the West Street Grill in
Boston, the place where the Hawthornes once wed, and then we see Sarah walking
across the same floor where she had stood as Margaret Fuller conducting her
"conversations" about the conditions faced by the women of her day.
Richard and Julie Hazzard are happily married
but one day Richard wakes up feeling bored. On the train into Boston, he meets
Sarah and what begins as an innocent flirtation soon becomes the catalyst that
prompts Richard's self-reflection. Will he risk losing all that he has to break
the monotony of his life and satisfy his desire for Sarah? Not if his friend,
Ed, has anything to say about it. Ed lives a life of honor and Richard admires
that, but he doesn't believe he can live up to the code that Ed lives by. Julie
is an artist who has set her art aside and devoted herself fully to Richard and
their children. Now she wonders if in doing so a part of herself has been lost.
She envies her friend, Emma, who in her past life as schoolteacher, Martha Hunt
chose to drown herself in the river in Concord rather than live her life in the
way Julie does now.
The themes of love, trust, freedom, devotion,
history, ghosts and reincarnation are there in the memoir as well, as McIntyre
also struggles with her desire for freedom and her inability to trust her
instincts that have led her to Concord and to a destiny that hadn't yet been
fully revealed.
About
the Author:
Cathryn
McIntyre is the author of two memoirs, Honor in Concord and The Thoreau Whisperer,
about her experience living in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts. She
is also a natural psychic and clairvoyant, an astrologer, a UFO experiencer, a
shared death experiencer, and an occasional ghost investigator.
One
of her ghost investigations was written about by author, Greg Latimer in his
book Ghosts of the Boothbay Region. Ronny LeBlanc, one of the stars of the
Travel Channel's Expedition Bigfoot, included an interview with McIntyre in the
latest of his Monsterland series of books. In that interview she talks about
her UFO experiences and impressions of Bigfoot. McIntyre also did a candid
interview with Paranormal Underground Magazine in which she discussed a
lifetime of paranormal and supernatural experiences. It can be read on her website:
www.theconcordwriter.com
In
2006, following an after-death visit from her mentor, who was an eminent
Thoreau scholar, McIntyre found herself connecting psychically with the spirit
of Henry David Thoreau. She writes about that experience in her book, The
Thoreau Whisperer, but it is in Honor in Concord where the story of her life in
Concord begins.
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