From the Publisher
Floating in My Mother's Palm is the compelling and mystical story of Hanna Malter, a young girl growing up in 1950's Burgdorf, the small German town Ursula Hegi so brilliantly brought to life in her bestselling novel Stones from the River. Hanna's courageous voice evokes her unconventional mother, who swims during thunderstorms; the illegitimate son of an American GI, who learns from Hanna about his father; and the librarian, Trudi Montag, who lets Hanna see her hometown from a dwarf's extraordinary point of view. Although Ursula Hegi wrote Floating in My Mother's Palm first, it can be read as a sequel to Stones from the River.

If you have ever read Stones From the River or any of Hegi's subsequent novels, you'll enjoy this early story that takes place in Burgdorf, and involves a number of familiar characters.

Most interesting to me was the note I found tucked inside it, addressed as follows:
Miss Martha Hart Rhodes
soon to be Mrs Bert Glenn Utsey III
or Mrs Martha Utsey (Mrs Bert))

The note inside (yes, I did read it, nosey nelson that I am) said:

Dear Martha,
I just wanted to thank you for being such a marvelous friend. Your help with the party was truly my saving grace. I was feeling so poorly last week and I wouldn't have been able to get everything done without you.

You will be a great mother to the Utsey children. I suggest that you require them to have lemonade stands. It will keep them out of the house and you can use their earnings for your Manilo's. What will you do about the white furniture though?
Fondly,
N

I did try and find an Utsey in the phone book but was unsuccessful. (I was up in Rabun County, Georgia, which is where I bought the book last spring-- in a wonderful Used book store , now out of business.) There were a plethora of Rhodes, though, too many to track down Martha Utsey nee Rhodes.

RELEASE NOTES:

I hope to leave this on the shelf tomorrow if I can. If not, it will travel to North Carolina with me over the weekend and be released there.

Whoops! Didn't get by Muddy Waters. Took the book with me to NC

RELEASE NOTES:

CAme here today with javaczuk to sample the wonderful coffee, and then returned in the afternoon for a cupping.

This book was left for a future reader to find. Enjoy!


To the finder of this book:
Hello and congratulations! You have not only found yourself a good book, but a whole community of booklovers dedicated to sharing books with each other and the world at large. I hope you'll stick around a bit and get to know BookCrossing --maybe even make a journal entry on this book. You may choose to remain anonymous or to join (its free!) And if you do choose to join, I hope you'll consider using me, bookczuk, as your referring member. Feel free to read and keep this book, or to pass it on to a friend or even set it out "in the wild" for someone else to find like you did. If you do choose to join and journal, then you can watch the book as it travels- You'll be alerted by email each time someone makes another journal entry. It's all confidential (you're known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your e-mail address), free, and spam-free. Happy reading!