Book Report & More

3 min readMay 24, 2026

From pinterest.com, posted by Arinayi ArrMrtz:

What’s it gonna take to stop this? Headline from foxnews.com: “Teen mobs flood malls and beaches as takeover chaos spreads nationwide.”

There may be a settlement to the Iran War. I don’t trust the Republican Guard. I wish there was a way to tell how many people inside the country are actually anti-regime.

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Born in 1962, Melanie Benjamin grew up in Indianapolis. After raising her children, she took up writing full time, publishing two contemporary novels under her real name, Melanie Hauser, before turning to historical fiction. She has written nine books in that genre. The Children’s Blizzard (2021) came my way via a donation. In terms of modern works, I rank it with Larry McMurtrey’s Lonesome Dove and Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War. It is the story of a fierce storm that hit Nebraska and the Dakotas in 1888. Not only is the story riveting, the depth of the characterizations is phenomenal. No one knows for sure how many perished, as the area’s leaders fudged the figures, wary of discouraging migrants. The narrative is at once heartbreaking and inspiring. A large part of the focus is on two sisters, daughters of Norwegian immigrants, who were teachers in separate areas despite being only teenagers. Although it is a grim view of humanity, it is also uplifting. The prose and dialogue are solid, the 343 pages of the large paperback reading like considerably less. If it’s not a masterpiece, it’s as close to one as an author gets. 4500+ users at Amazon have rated The Children’s Blizzard, forging to a consensus of 4.4 on a scale of five. I’ll go with 4.5. Kudos, Madam. Photos from Google Images:

As for my own work, I banged out a couple of pages of a short story that I believe will be unsatisfying to readers. It concerns an issue I’ve wondered about for a long time. I’ve become a fan of Tracker, based on the thrillers of Jeffrey Deaver. It’s already in its third season. I respect its economical storytelling and fast pace. The hero, Colter Shaw, kills a least one dirtbag per episode and shows no ill effects. Although those he dispatches are perpetrating evil, I sense the body count would eventually begin to take a toll. The only show I recall that addressed this was the original The Equalizer, which ran four seasons, 88 episodes on CBS ‘85-’89. I did not want to take my piece into familiar territory — stalker, hero goes nuts and starts killing for real, but in avoiding that I feel the story is hanging in mid-air. Then again, what does it matter? Hardly anyone reads my stuff and I may never get to a high enough word count to publish another book. Here are Edward Woodard and Justin Hartley, photos from GI: