Historical fiction based on the character of the absent father, Mr. March, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women who went off to the Civil War as a Union Chaplain leaving his family behind in very lean times.  The story alternates between the war and his earlier life.  After he ends up in a Washington hospital gravely ill, the narration switches to his wife, Marmee, and her perspective.   The cruelty, violence  and racism of soldiers on both sides challenges March’s idealistic beliefs.  Ultimately he becomes disillusioned and his experiences change his marriage and his outlook.  Brooks used the journals and diaries of Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father, and many other Civil War documents to give credibility and depth to this well-written piece of fiction.   Check our Catalog

Kathleen Z.

Written by the author of The Glass Castle, this is billed as a “True Life Novel” because it is based on the life of the author’s grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.  Walls blends fact with fiction to create an intriguing story about a remarkable woman who grew up in West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona in the early part of the 20th century when that part of the country was remote and still mostly unsettled.  At age 15 she rode her horse alone on a 28 day trip to take a teaching job.   Her indomitable spirit helped her survive challenges by creatively using her wits, e.g. during the Great Depression she had a modest business bootlegging liquor to cowboys in the remote west.  Over many years she married twice, had two children, earned a college degree, took flying lessons and treated life as an adventure.  Great story. Check our catalog.

Kathleen Zaenger, Director

I loved the characters in this story.  After the deaths of both her husband and her best friend, Hatty Kong has retired to a small Vermont town where she once lived.  She is seeking solace and the chance to build a new life. Her new neighbors are Cambodian refugees. They, too, are seeking solace away from the violence of gangs in the big city and the violent memories from Cambodia.  Hatty grew up in China, the daughter of an American missionary mother and a Chinese father.  As a teenager, she was sent alone to the U.S. to escape the Japanese occupation of China.  There is grief and tragedy, but the story is not sentimental.  In fact, humor helps temper the conflicts on many levels that take on the personal issues of grief, aging, loneliness, death, guilt, regret and the societal issues of immigration, religious fanaticism, small town pettiness and  economic challenges.  Jen handles the complexity of these with great skill. Check our catalog!

Kathleen Zaenger, Administration

Award-winning Bosnian-American Author weaves a tale that alternates between a story in 1908 and current time, both about immigrants in America.  In 1908 a Jewish immigrant, Lazarus Averbuch, is killed by the Chicago Police chief who believes Lazarus was an anarchist even though there was no direct evidence.  100 years later, a Bosnian immigrant writer decides to write a book about the incident.  The research journey meshes past and present with great skill. Check our catalog

Kathleen Z., Director

On an August day in 1974 New York City when a tight rope walker walks a line between the newly constructed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that he illegally installed, the stories of the lives of several unrelated people are woven together.   In the reflections on their lives, beauty and hope begin to overshadow the tragedy and hardship in their stories.  Although this is story was a little slow to take off it is great writing with characters that are worth caring about. Check our catalog

Kathleen Z., Director

A beautifully written story about Andrew Marlow, a psychiatrist who is also and an amateur painter. He takes the case of a painter, Robert Oliver, who had attempted to slash a painting in the National Gallery of Art and afterward has refused to talk at all. In Marlow’s quest to get to the heart of Oliver’s behavior, he discovers a series of letters from and to Beatrice de Clerval, a fictional artist from the impressionist era in France who abruptly stopped painting at the age of 29. Her story and Marlow’s discoveries about himself and the mystery of Oliver’s behavior make this one hard to put down.

The Pulitzer Prize winning author of TheWorld is Flat, Friedman makes a case for the U.S. to embrace a “green revolution” to revive America and lead the world in new and sustainable ways to live.  I confess that I skimmed the last quarter of the book because it is a tome of facts, history and opinion about economics, cultures of the world, weather, politics and more.  His research is impressive and his writing is great.  Even if you don’t agree with his opinions, he gives much food for thought and offers inspiration to tackle complicated issues that can lead to transformation.

The novel written with a teen adult protagonist will also appeal to adults. Andi Alpers is failing her classes in her last year at a prestigious private school in Brooklyn, NY. She is angry at her father for leaving, anxious for her mother who is not coping well and deeply saddened by the death of her younger brother. She accompanies her father, a famous scientist, to Paris for winter break to work on her graduation thesis. There she discovers the diary of Alexandrine Paradis who lived two centuries earlier during the French Revolution. Alexandrine’s words tell a story that transcends time and, at one point, become terrifyingly real.

In 1799 Japan allowed a few foreigners to stay only on the artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor. Otherwise foreigners are blocked from entering Japan and Japanese citizens are prevented from leaving. As a young man, Jacob De Zoet arrives to help his employer, the Dutch East Indies Company, clean house. His goal is to make his fortune and reunite with his fiancé in Holland. Fate hands him a very different story. He falls in love with a Japanese woman even though he is only allowed to see her on Dejima in the presence of her Japanese colleagues in very public settings. If he in any way reveals his attraction to her, it could be deadly for both of them. Local and world events intervene to take them both on very different paths that include trust and betrayal and the challenges of historical racial and gender boundaries. Mitchell’s painstakingly detailed style of developing characters and settings and sweeping adventures reminds me of James Michener’s historical fiction.

Kathleen Z., Library Director

Check the catalog