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The Atlas of Forgotten Places
The Atlas of Forgotten Places: A Novel | Jenny D. Williams
13 posts | 2 read | 24 to read
Two women from different worlds bound in a quest to save their loved ones. After a long career as an aid worker, Sabine Hardt has retreated to her native Germany for a quieter life. But when her American niece Lily disappears while volunteering in Uganda, Sabine must return to places and memories she once thought buried in order to find her. In Uganda, Rose Akuluhaunted by a troubled past with the Lords Resistance Army and a family torn apart by waris distressed when her lover Ocen vanishes without a trace. Side by side, Sabine and Rose must unravel the tangled threads that tie Lily and Ocens lives togetherultimately discovering that the truth of their loved ones disappearance is inescapably entwined to the secrets the two women carry. Vividly rendered by a fresh new voice in fiction, The Atlas of Forgotten Places delves deep into the heart of compassion and redemption. It spans geographies and generations to lay bare the stories that connect us all.
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GatheringBooks
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#ShowSomeLove Day 7: Some kind of #RedCovers - bought at the online book sale of Big Bad Wolf here in the UAE. Much needed book-buying-therapy.

TheKidUpstairs Love the cover of the tagged book! 4y
39 likes1 comment
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mrozzz
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Here are my #JanuaryStats! 😄 Kept up a decent number of nonfiction reads, cranked through 6 audio books— need to step up my numbers for POC/foreign authors and this will be a great month to do just that.

The book that really took me by surprise (and for a ride) is tagged: a fantastic, horrifying adventure to/across Uganda. Highly recommend.

Best read: Fangirl 👍🏻
Least favorite: Dear Cyborgs 👎🏻

UrsulaMonarch Thanks for highlighting the tagged book - stacked! Mind if I ask what was your favorite audiobook of the month? ☺️ 7y
DebinHawaii Great month! 🎉📚👍👍 7y
mrozzz @UrsulaMonarch ah! What a good question! Code Girls was fascinating but the best performance was surely Claire Danes reading The Handmaid‘s Tale 😃 7y
mrozzz @DebinHawaii Thank you!! 😊 7y
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mrozzz
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Some said it was God‘s will that she survived at all. So many were still gone. Their fates might never be known. Rose understood the impossibility of hope: how could you want your child alive, knowing the acts he must have committed in order to remain so? But how could you wish for anything else?

How could you support Museveni‘s army, when they committed atrocities of their own? When it could be your child, your lover, fleeing their bullets?

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mrozzz
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When you spend enough time living at the periphery of anarchy, your perspective begins to shift. Normal becomes whatever surrounded you. You recognize that all life is risk, danger is relative, and death arrives equally by the swiftest machete or the tiniest mosquito.

When the place itself is peril, there‘s no use building walls—the menace is in the air you breathe, in the sunlight and rain that fall across your face when you turn it to the sky.

Leftcoastzen Wow! 7y
mrozzz @Leftcoastzen such a good book... so many powerful quotes! 7y
68 likes2 comments
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mrozzz

“Ocen is a part of this too. We haven‘t forgotten him. It‘s just easier to spur people to action when it‘s an American life at stake.”

The injustice of this truth should have outraged her. Tens of thousands of abducted Acholi children, more slaughtered at the rebels‘ hands; how many dead & dying in IDP camps?

Ah, but should a “mono” girl be among them! Then we may intervene; then we may act. She felt nothing. She‘d heard this story before.

review
mrozzz
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Pickpick

Absolutely stunning debut.

Written with the complexities of a Karin Slaughter mystery and the human agony of MR Carey‘s “hungry” books— we meet Sabine, a German former aid worker, looking for her missing American niece Lily in Uganda which is in the middle of a war. Rose, taken as a girl to the rebel camps, lost touch with her beau, Ocen (Lily‘s regular driver). The women are forced to work together in hope of finding their loved ones alive.

readordierachel Nice review! 7y
mrozzz @ReadOrDieRachel Thanks!! 😊 7y
minkyb Great review! 7y
See All 7 Comments
MrBook Great review! 7y
mrozzz @minkyb @MrBook Thanks!!! It was a great book. I highly recommend it. 😄 7y
UrsulaMonarch Wow, the relation to Carey's books is scary & intriguing! 7y
mrozzz @UrsulaMonarch ha! It was just so clear to me at the time... the way the descriptions are made so clearly and the depth of difficult scenes both pointed to a comparison to Carey. I hope you get your hands on it! It was fabulous. 7y
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mrozzz
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“When asked how it felt to be a mother, Hannah replied, “It feels as though a piece of my heart exists outside my own body, in another person. And I can never get it back.” This answer confirmed to Sabine that she would never have children— because why would you want a piece of your heart in such a precarious location? Why choose that uncertainty? Love made you choose some above others. And so, many years later, her heart was lonely—but intact.”

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mrozzz
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“Selfish as it was to admit, it was invigorating to be mixed up in the wrongs of the world, to have a finger on the pulse of evil.

Better the danger you can see and touch and beat back with sticks than the one that comes slinking through the shadows, entering your home through a hole in your heart.”

Reggie Yikes that last sentence. 7y
mrozzz @Reggie there is so much powerful writing in this book! Plenty of “yikes” moments but so well-written.... 7y
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Purrfectpages
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Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks I have THE FORGOTTEN ROOM and I need to get to it!! ☺️📚 7y
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mrozzz
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1. Uninhibited

2. Prolific

3. Heartbreaking

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cathysaid
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Not a bad wait at the airport when I've got coffee, Litsy, and this amazing book. #currentlyreading

Ashley_Nicoletto That coffee. 😍 7y
cathysaid It is delightful 💕 and is preventing the deaths of a few nearby children. Airports are excellent forms of birth control. 7y
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MimiLovesToRead
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Another Goodreads win!
Looks good!

kathleenaflynn I'm on page 175 and it's great! 7y
MimiLovesToRead @kathleenaflynn great to know! I'll hopefully get to it soon. 7y
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katelizabee
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starting a new read tonight! 🤗

Cinfhen Sounds really good and I love the title💕can't wait to hear your thoughts when you're finished! 8y
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