[NFBV-Potomac-Announce] Some More Books

[John Halverson]

Hi,

A reminder, a book club meeting at 4:00 PM  tomorrow.

Bonnie O'Day gave four suggestions but American Dirt we have already discussed.



The Great Divide: a novel, by Cristina Henriquez
The building of the Panama Canal is the backbone of this book. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection. Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill.
Comment: A captivating story about the various characters that lived in or moved to Panama in the early part of the century.  Good character development and the diversity of characters make the book highly readable. I would have liked a little more information about how the canal was actually built. It made me want to take a cruise and see it.

Butcher's Crossing, by John Williams
1870s. After hearing Ralph Waldo Emerson speak, Will Andrews drops out of Harvard and heads west to "find himself." He funds a hunt that spirals into the slaughter of thousands of buffalo. Andrews returns from the expedition questioning both his actions and the value of his experience.
Comment: I would never have picked this book but someone in our book club wanted to read it. The subject was tough for me to get behind and I had to skip the "buffalo slaughter" parts, but the book was fast paced and pretty interesting. The myths about the west were dispelled in this book.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride
The book takes place in Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe's theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.
Comment: I love all of James McBride's books. This one was particularly compelling to me because it describes the situation of a deaf child who is institutionalized against everyone in the community's will. It also depicts the lives of several members of the Chicken Hill community, the down and out as well as the prosperous. Lots of humor as well as pathos.

The two below are from Leroy. I don't know if they  are on BARD.

The Other Wes Moore
By Wes Moore
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From the governor of Maryland, the "compassionate" (People), "startling" (Baltimore Sun), "moving" (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.
The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore.

Wes just couldn't shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?

That letter led to a correspondence and relationship that have lasted for several years. Over dozens of letters and prison visits, Wes discovered that the other Wes had had a life not unlike his own: Both had had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless; they'd hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and both had run into trouble with the police. At each stage of their young lives they had come across similar moments of decision, yet their choices would lead them to astonishingly different destinies.

Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world.


Couldn't Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution.


n a stunning work of insight and hope, New York Times bestselling author Wally Lamb once again reveals his unmatched talent for finding humanity in the lost and lonely and celebrates the transforming power of the written word.

For several years, Lamb has taught writing to a group of women prisoners at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. In this unforgettable collection, the women of York describe in their own words how they were imprisoned by abuse, rejection, and their own self-destructive impulses long before they entered the criminal justice system. Yet these are powerful stories of hope and healing, told by writers who have left victimhood behind.

In his moving introduction, Lamb describes the incredible journey of expression and self-awareness the women took through their writing and shares how they challenged him as a teacher and as a fellow author. Couldn't Keep It to Myself is a true testament to the process of finding oneself and working toward a better day.


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