Consuelo Saah Baehr

Despite not being able to recall my reason for wanting to read this novel, I found the story of two twentieth century women divided by fortune captivating enough to finish in one day! The prose is oddly stilted, like a Wikipedia article, and the romantic twists and turns felt a little like a soap opera in the second half of the book, but I liked Faith, the poor little rich girl who is 'nobody's darling', and couldn't help but cheer on Hope, the biracial orphan whose instinctive knowledge of the stock market twice opens the door into Faith's world. That said, I personally have no head for figures and finance, so the excessive detail about Wall Street - leading up to the crash in 1929 - left me cold. Definitely a mixed bag of historical detail and timeless emotions, but entertaining throughout!… (mais)

I listened to this book with rapt attention. It gives an idea about the situation in Palestine from the end of the 19th Century till about the mid-20th Century. It spans three generations of women (mothers/daughters), living in Palestine, near Jerusalem.
When I started listening to this book, I knew next to nothing about the political situation during that time, and I learned a lot through this book.
I wasn't really into the sometimes steamy scenes of the book, which is why I distracted a star, I didn't really feel those scenes were necessary for the story.
Still, it's a great book I would recommend to everyone with an interest in recent history.

The narrator did a truly great job, so the narration warrants 5 stars.… (mais)

Faith Simpson is born at the dawn of the twentieth century into a dynasty that gives her everything she will ever need—except her parents’ love and attention. Often misunderstood, she trusts few as she grows up on the family’s manicured Long Island estate. Just twenty-nine miles away, on lower Manhattan’s dirty, crowded streets, Hope Lee’s world is one of poverty and desperation. The scrappy child of hard-working Irish and Chinese immigrants has learned to fend for herself, until a terrible disaster thrusts her into a strange, new world of privilege.… (mais)