And She Was

I loved this book. Very smart read. There was a lot going on..the troubled central figure with an alcoholic father and run-around mother who tries to escape by moving to a remote Alaskan island. Her insights into Greek culture. And then the look into Aleutian women..fascinating. I can't wait for this author to produce another book!

This book was fascinating on so many levels. The setting of the Aleutian Islands is very unique and the place is like a character in and of itself. Very atmospheric. The story of the Aleutian women was also fascinating. One part history of a place, and one part anthropoligical study of a people. The way the author interweaves this with Brandy's story is just brilliant. I was hooked from page one and couldn't wait to finish the story to see how everything turned out, but then when it was over I didn't want it to end. This is definitely a book I will never forget. One of those books that gets under your skin and you just want it to stay there.

I won't recap the plot here since others have done that, but I'll just add that this is the kind of book that keeps me coming back for more. The character, Brandy still lives on in my head months later. If you like reading about adventure, history and mystery and especially about other women's lives, you'll like this book. Well done! Keep writing please, Cindy!

This is not a beach book. It is a book to read late at night under a warm quilt with a glass of brandy on the table. The story of Brandy (a girl, not the drink) will keep you up reading all night and phoning in sick to finish it. She is a woman that everyone knows; trashy, drifting, and slipping into middle age without anything to live for. Dyson takes her to the end of the earth (Dutch Harbor Alaska), to a feirce and proud people, and to their dark history in order to set her free. In the process she learns that in the world of heros and monsters the one who will not choose is perhaps the most dangerous, and that nothing is more important than living with intent. At times chilling, at times hillarious, this is a great story by a fierce new story teller. Buy two

The point of good fiction is to present alternative points of view, to transport the reader into the world of another, to suspend belief, to see life through a new, and often blurred, set of eyes. Dyson does that when she brings blonde-haired Brandy, a woman who has spent her whole life following men she's never cared about, to this remote Alaskan town at the end of the world. It is here, against the backdrop of lost souls and mythical women that Brandy finally sees why her life has turned out the way it has and gathers the strength to change it. Dyson in no way denigrates Alaska or the Alaskan women, rather she exposes a cross-section of life there, some good, some not so good. And she does it in poetry. I strongly recommend this book.