Monday Mini-Reviews: Two Five Star Reads

 I've had a great weekend of reading. I read and loved two fantastic historical fiction books and am at a bit of a loss as to what I can pick up next that will even compare.

Stealing by Margaret Verble - this is narrated by Kit, a young girl whose Cherokee mother has died, and her white father is trying his best to take care of her while suffering from a broken heart/depression.  It's a little hard to know exactly what is going on because Kit is still a young girl and we are hearing her perception of things, but her voice is so innocent as she explains in her matter of fact manner that she is at a residential school after she was taken from her family.  The ending is one I both loved and hated, but I feel like Kit and her story are going to stay with me for a long time.

House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson- I don't always love Reese Witherspoon's book club picks, but this is one I absolutely fell in love with.  There are two narrators, Ruby and Eleanor, in this novel that takes place in the 1950s.  Ruby is a teenager (the daughter of a teenage mother who didn't really want her), trying to work hard and earn a scholarship to college.  Eleanor is attending Howard University where she meets William, a med school student who is from the elite African American community in D.C.  The two fall in love but Eleanor is not welcomed by William's family and she feels out of place in the world he grew up in.  While William and Eleanor long to start a family, Ruby finds herself drawn to a nice white Jewish boy - a love that wouldn't be accepted in the 1950s anywhere.  The two stories converge in a way that is perhaps a little predictable, but I absolutely loved the way Johnson developed the characters and the time and place of this novel.

I'm not sure how much better my reading for February can get.  These two books were pretty remarkable, but I'm looking for something that can follow them up.  Suggestions, anyone?