Good evening and welcome to another episode of Inside the Cover here on PBS Kansas.

Tonight's book is The Thing We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Kelly Rimmer is an Australian author of historical and contemporary fiction, including The Warsaw Orphan and The Secret Daughter.

With 3 million books sold.

Her books have been translated into dozens of languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Rimmer lives in New South Wales, Australia, and she owns and operates Collins Bookstore Orange, the last remaining bookstore in the regional city she calls home.

This book was yet another loan from my frien and fellow bibliophile, Randy, who advised me that this was a book about World War Two, which is a topic we are both interested in, as you might agree, from the number of books on this topic that I have reviewed here on this show.

Well imagine my surprise and chagrin when the first chapter begins in a grocery store in Winter Park, Florida, as Alice Michaels attempts to deal with her son Eddie, who is on the floor, his legs flailing as he screams at the top of his lungs.

He's pinching his upper arms.

Compulsively ugly purple and red bruises are already starting to form.

Eddie is also covered in yogurt.

The skin on his face is mottled from the exertion, and there are beads of sweat on his forehead.

As this was not what I was expecting.

Did I misunderstand Randy's recommendation?

I put the book aside for what turned out to be a couple of weeks.

However, I returned to it and I was so glad I did.

The Things We Cannot Say is a book that touches upon multiple themes and subjects.

It is a book about Wade and Alice Michaels and their two children, Edison and Pascal, their precocious ten year old daughter, who presents challenges of her own.

It is about Alice's relationship with her parents, including her maximum achiever mother, a 76 year old lawyer and judge.

And it is about Alice's love for her grandmother or ‘Babcia as she has always called her, who is currently in the hospita as a result of a minor stroke.

It is a book about Alice and Wades marriage.

It is a boo about the challenges and rewards of parenting a child on the autism spectrum.

It is the story of a stay at home mom married to a PhD scientist with a high pressure job.

And of course, it is a book about the horrors of war and living and surviving in occupied territory during Hitler's campaign of cruelty and hate.

The story is told in alternating chapters focused on the current day life of Alice Michaels and the past life of Alina Dziak, a young woman living with he parents and two older brothers on the family farm just past the outskirts of the rural townshi of Trzebinia in southern Poland.

Elena's story begins in the spring of 1938 as she prepare for the departure of her love, Thomas Slaski, who was too soon heading to Warsaw to attend medical school t become a doctor like his father.

Rimmer does an excellent job of weavin these two live stories together to provide the reader with page turning information and insights, with a good bit of mystery tossed in.

How do the two lives connect, or do they?

Ultimately, at her grandmother's deathbed plea, Alice reluctantly travels to Poland to see what she can learn about her grandmother's past.

I will not spoil the plot by telling you more.

I think a good book should inform and entertain the things we cannot say certainly fits these criteria and I am happy to have read it.

Thanks again Randy, and I am happy to recommend it to you.

Good night and see you next time.