The Boundless Bookshelf

  About the Book: ✦ Title: The Nature of Small Birds ✦ Author: Susie Finkbeiner ✦ Genre: Triple timeline fiction w/ light faith threads (1975, 1988, 2013-2014) ✦ Series: Currently a standalone novel ✦ Recommend for: Ages 16/17+ {not for those very sensitive to war and adoption} My Personal Rating 3.5 ⭐️ 📖 Synopsis In 1975, three thousand children were airlifted out of Saigon to be adopted into Western homes. When Mindy, one of those children, announces her plans to return to Vietnam to find her birth mother, her loving adopted family is suddenly thrown back to the events surrounding her unconventional arrival in their lives. Though her father supports Mindy's desire to meet her family of origin, he struggles privately with an unsettling fear that he'll lose the daughter he's poured his heart into. Mindy's mother undergoes the emotional rollercoaster inherent in the adoption of a child from a war-torn country, discovering the joy hidden amid the difficulties. And Mind...

About the Book: ✦ Title: All Manner of Things ✦ Author: Susie Finkbeiner ✦ Genre: Historical Fiction (with light faith threads) ✦ Series: Currently a standalone novel ✦ Recommend for: Ages 16/17+ My Personal Rating 4 ⭐️ 📖 Synopsis When Annie Jacobson's brother Mike enlists as a medic in the Army in 1967, he hands her a piece of paper with the address of their long-estranged father. If anything should happen to him in Vietnam, Mike says, Annie must let their father know.  In Mike's absence, their father returns to face tragedy at home, adding an extra measure of complication to an already tense time. As they work toward healing and pray fervently for Mike's safety overseas, letter by letter the Jacobsons must find a way to pull together as a family, regardless of past hurts. In the tumult of this time, Annie and her family grapple with the tension of holding both hope and grief in the same hand, even as they learn to turn to the One who binds the wounds of the brokenhearted...

About the Book: ✦ Title: The All-American ✦ Author: Susie Finkbeiner ✦ Genre: Christian Historical Fiction ✦ Series: No, a standalone novel ✦ Recommend for: ages 15/16+ My Personal Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 📖Synopsis It is 1952, and nearly all the girls 16-year-old Bertha Harding knows dream of getting married, keeping house, and raising children in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. Bertha dreams of baseball. She reads every story in the sports section, she plays ball with the neighborhood boys--she even writes letters to the pitcher for the Workington Sweet Peas, part of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. When Bertha's father is accused of being part of the Communist Party by the House Un-American Activities Committee, life comes crashing down on them. Disgraced and shunned, the Hardings move to a small town to start over where the only one who knows them is shy Uncle Matthew. But dreams are hard to kill, and when Bertha gets a chance to try out for the Workington Sweet Pe...