Loss of Two Authors

Two of my long time favored authors died in the past week. Anita Shreve on  March 29th and Dorothy Garlock the sixth of April.

I read Shreve's final book, The Stars Are Fire, last June. At the time I wrote: "I will always read anything Shreve writes." Obviously I didn't know about her terminal cancer, and thought I would have more from her to look forward to.

The Pilot's Wife may have been the first book of hers I read as I was following Oprah's Book Club choices then (1999) and read as many of her picks as possible. I thought I had read all the Shreve titles my two libraries have, but in checking my presumption, I've found at least one I haven't read. It is already on my list to check out. Perhaps I will find another one or two I missed reading.

I can't tell you which of Dorothy Garlock's books I first read, but the ones I remember, and probably liked best, were the three in her Route 66 series, Mother Road, Hope's Highway, and Song of the Road. 

This is what I wrote about Garlock a couple of years ago: "I always like her novels. I think mostly because she writes of small towns and farms usually in the Midwest and usually set during the time period I think of as 'the good 'ole days'. They are always sweet romances with the right amount of struggles and troubles before the couple can finally be together."

Garlock wrote something like sixty novels under her name and two pen names. I probably haven't even read one fourth of the titles. As with any prolific author, some of her books are more readable than others. Garlock's books have been the ones I pick up when I'm in the mood for her type of era romances. I haven't read her last novel, The Nearness of You, but I most likely will now.

What I found interesting and admired about Garlock was that she did not begin writing novels until she retired from working as a bookkeeper and columnist for a local newspaper in Clear Lake, Iowa. And that she was still writing when she was in her 90's. (She was 98 when she died.)

I will miss having new releases from these two to read. It is good to know that there are books out there by them that I haven't read - old friends I can still visit.