Book Review

Basic Details:

Book Title: Honor in Concord

Subtitle: Seeking Spirit in Literary Concord

Author: Cathryn McIntyre

Genre: Memoirs

Part of a series?

Order in series:

Best read after earlier books in series?

Available: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61302752-honor-in-concord

Overall score:

I scored this book 4/5

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Short Summary of the book:

This is a memoir of sorts. Confusing in places and interesting in others. We follow different characters at different times in history and the present. It’s a nice read.

What I liked about the book:

The different stories throughout the books.

What I didn’t like about the book:

That it sometimes confused me a little.

My favourite bits in the book:

The book was enjoyable.

My least favourite bits in the book:

The confusing bits.

Any further books in the series? Any more planned by this author?

This author has written a another memoir.

What books could this be compared to and why?

It’s difficult to compare this book to any others as I haven’t read any like this one before.

Recommendation:

In summary, I would recommend this book for the following readers:

Children No

Young Adult Maybe

Adult Yes

If you like your books filled with details about literary history, hints of the paranormal and clairvoyance, this may be the book for you.

Book Description by Author:

In Honor in Concord, Cathryn McIntyre tells the story of the first year she lived in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts in an antique home she calls "Quiet House" on a street named for Henry David Thoreau. One day she sets out to record the images of Concord's past that are always on her mind and what results is a fictional story told within the pages of memoir in which the writers of mid-19th century Concord (i.e., Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller and Alcott) are living new lives in Concord in present day.

Honor in Concord is set at all the historic locations in Concord, including The Old Manse, The Emerson's Home, Orchard House, The Wayside and Walden Pond and there are short vignettes throughout the story that open up like windows into Concord's literary past. One moment we see Julie watching her young daughter performing at her dance recital and the next we see her as Sophia Hawthorne walking in the yard of the Wayside as her children run about in play and her husband, Nathaniel looks on. One moment we see Sarah having a flirtatious lunch with Richard at the West Street Grill in Boston, the place where the Hawthornes once wed, and then we see Sarah walking across the same floor where she had stood as Margaret Fuller conducting her "conversations" about the conditions faced by the women of her day.

Richard and Julie Hazzard are happily married but one day Richard wakes up feeling bored. On the train into Boston, he meets Sarah and what begins as an innocent flirtation soon becomes the catalyst that prompts Richard's self-reflection. Will he risk losing all that he has to break the monotony of his life and satisfy his desire for Sarah? Not if his friend, Ed, has anything to say about it. Ed lives a life of honor and Richard admires that, but he doesn't believe he can live up to the code that Ed lives by. Julie is an artist who has set her art aside and devoted herself fully to Richard and their children. Now she wonders if in doing so a part of herself has been lost. She envies her friend, Emma, who in her past life as schoolteacher, Martha Hunt chose to drown herself in the river in Concord rather than live her life in the way Julie does now.

The themes of love, trust, freedom, devotion, history, ghosts and reincarnation are there in the memoir as well, as McIntyre also struggles with her desire for freedom and her inability to trust her instincts that have led her to Concord and to a destiny that hadn't yet been fully revealed.

About the Author:

Cathryn McIntyre is the author of two memoirs, Honor in Concord and The Thoreau Whisperer, about her experience living in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts. She is also a natural psychic and clairvoyant, an astrologer, a UFO experiencer, a shared death experiencer, and an occasional ghost investigator.

One of her ghost investigations was written about by author, Greg Latimer in his book Ghosts of the Boothbay Region. Ronny LeBlanc, one of the stars of the Travel Channel's Expedition Bigfoot, included an interview with McIntyre in the latest of his Monsterland series of books. In that interview she talks about her UFO experiences and impressions of Bigfoot. McIntyre also did a candid interview with Paranormal Underground Magazine in which she discussed a lifetime of paranormal and supernatural experiences. It can be read on her website: www.theconcordwriter.com

In 2006, following an after-death visit from her mentor, who was an eminent Thoreau scholar, McIntyre found herself connecting psychically with the spirit of Henry David Thoreau. She writes about that experience in her book, The Thoreau Whisperer, but it is in Honor in Concord where the story of her life in Concord begins.