Since this book doesn’t come out until October in the US, I was very excited to stumble upon it in Belgium. It’s not that long of a read (it didn’t even last me the entire plane ride from Brussels to Philadelphia), but it was a really rich, satisfying read that has stayed with me since.

One of my favorite reading “things” is when unrelated books you read in short periods turn out to be thematically linked; they become a matched set to me / a good “pair.” As with “The Buffalo Soldier” which I read a week earlier, this is a story of racially-mixed adoption (white parents/black child(ren).

What truly makes a family? What makes a mother? How important are the physical links? Do the emotional ones replace them? Can your hopes and dreams for other people ever STOP hindering them / stop hindering your relationship with them when they don’t work out?

This was just really lovely. I think I’ve now read all Patchett’s books. I’m on the bandwagon. Leading the parade. They’re all really different than each other; they’ve all got at least one breathtaking, beautiful moment. This book had several. Run, Kenya, run…