The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

Title: The Great Alone

Author: Kristin Hannah

Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction

This book is as much a love letter to Alaska as it is a tale about a teenage girl named Lenore and her parents. Lenore's dad, Ernt, suffers from PTSD after surviving being a POW in Vietnam. Still devoted to Ernt, Leni's mom Cora refuses to leave Ernt as he becomes increasingly unstable. When they move to Alaska for a new start, all of them will be tested by the beautiful, but harsh, climate within and without. Will they all survive the great alone?

- Sarah R.

Check out The Great Alone @ the library.

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen

The Sympathizer is a book which examines the post-Vietnam War era from the perspective of the Vietnamese, both the victors and the vanquished. The narrator, The Captain, is a spy for the North, a mole serving as a trusted aid to a South Vietnamese general. He is excellent in his role. Neither South Vietnamese officers nor American advisors suspect him to be a spy. At the behest of his North Vietnamese handlers, he accompanies the general to the United States after the fall of Saigon. This was necessary because Vietnamese army officers and certain Americans hoped to retake Vietnam by staging an armed invasion through Laos. The Captain has an astute eye when judging everything American. He sees corruption and the shallowness of American culture. But when he returns to a united Vietnam, he discovers that the new country is not the country he had expected.

Vietnamese-born and American-educated, Viet Thanh Nguyen's master of the English language and knowledge of American culture make this book a pleasure to read.