Military spouse groups all seem to have book clubs, and KOSC is no exception! The first book was Moloka’i by Alan Brennert. Off of a tip from a fellow spouse, I chose to listen to the audio book because the narrator was native Hawaiian and pronounced a lot of Hawaiian words over the course of the story.

It’s historical fiction and starts around 1890 I believe. It’s a story about a young girl who gets leprosy and her life on the island of Moloka’i suffering the consequences of exile and the disease. I tried to listen on my lunch breaks often, but there are definitely moments I couldn’t stomach eating and listening at the same time; so be forewarned there are some rather gruesome and grotesque bits. I do highly recommend reading it, though!

The military wives were very nice and we talked about a whole ton of things after we talked about the book itself. I sometimes find the chatter can trend too negative for my preference, once we were lost in a spiral of talking about disastrous move stories (someone’s crates got water logged and they essentially lost everything… you can use your imagination to guess about other stories). I remind myself it is reality for some and it doesn’t have to be my reality; in fact our moves have gone surprisingly well all things considered. It’s easy to say “it’s just things” when it hasn’t happened to me, but there’s some truth. Brian and I purposefully don’t have a lot of sentimental value things and have 10 year old furniture aside from a few pieces. Anyway, tangent over, book club was a great time to meet new people. Three(!!) of us were from MA!! The others were from all over. The host is part of a kickball league with some crazy rules and I anticipate going to watch sometime.

Looking forward to seeing what the next book is!