Barbara Sjoholm

I thought this book was incredible! I learned so much from this book about the Sami people. It was fascinating the stories that items have as time passes. It was interesting to read how much a place can change over time. This was a book I couldnt put down although there was alot of sadness and few glimmers of hope. A very informative read and one that was so thoughtfully written. This book would be perfect for a historians collection.

What starts out as a promise to help a friend of a friend find a missing husband because she can speak Spanish, Cassandra Reilly jets off to Barcelona, Spain. She soon finds herself running all over the city, as in running into old lovers left and right. She is supposed to be looking for Ben Stevens, husband to Frankie. Instead, her time is taken up with deflecting old lover, Ana, and Ana's quest to start a family with Cassandra; or lusting after on again-off again lover and hairdresser, show more Carmen; or getting orgasmic foot massages from the wacky weird foot therapist, Alice. Occasionally, in between being starved for sexual companionship, and looking for lost people, Cassandra works on translating a South American best seller and discovering the genius of Antonio Gaudi's architecture. Then there's looking for Ben...remember the missing husband of Frankie? Only, it isn't Ben who is missing. This is a never ending kidnapping caper. The gender bending gets confusing at times. show less

Join Cassandra Reilly in a tale of travel, mystery and identity in a world chock full of Gaudi-esq surrealism and made to order doll's houses, where gender is thrown on or off as casually as a sequinned cloak. Translating another story of missing mothers and domineering husbands as she goes, will Cassandra ever get to the truth of this bizzare family and be able to get on with more important matters, such as visiting her friends in Bucharest?

Books about the Far North have the power to soothe me during a long, hot summer. Sjoholm not only offers beautiful scenes of ice, snow, and soft light, but also raises questions about eco-tourism and our relationship with the landscape in general. Her book fulfilled for me one of the hopes she expresses for the Sami and their future visitors: "They'd give the urban dweller some taste of a culture that went back thousands of years, no small thing to offer those of us who are rootless without show more being nomadic." show less