Erin Bartels

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week’s Topic is How has you blogging changed since you began blogging.

In this intriguing novel for adults, which combines a vivid sense of geographical setting and emotionally complex characters, author Erin Bartels narrates the challenges, restrictions, and fears two women face as they make their way in the world. Separate, side-by-side narratives relate the stories of Viviana Torrens in 1879 Toulouse, France, and Esther Markstrom in present day East Lansing, Mich.

Erin Bartels is a two-time Christy finalist who writes character-driven fiction for curious people. Her readers know to expect that each of her novels will tell a unique story about fallible characters so tangible that it’s hard to believe they are not real people. Her themes of reckoning with the past, improving the present, and looking with hope to the future leave her readers with a sense of peace and possibility.