Love lyrical writing? Pick up Colby Cedar Smith’s fiercely emotional prose novel Call Me Athena.

Mary is living with her immigrant parents in Detroit, 1934. Henry Ford’s metropolis is looking more like a Hooverville, and Mary’s parents believe her only prospect for survival is to marry a successful man many decades her senior.

Despairing for a love match, Mary finds a set of letters written by two lovers kept apart by the Great War of 1918. In flashbacks, we see the young soldier and nurse lose their parents and homeland. Will they also lose each other? Will Mary settle for a miserable marriage? Come for the resolution of these dramatic questions and stay for the scenes that burst with hope, like a girl holding a boy’s hand in a blooming greenhouse, or two sisters huddling near a radio to hear Amelia Earhart’s adventures in the sky.

Place a hold on Call Me Athena in the library catalog or download the audiobook or ebook on Hoopla.