Mary Coin by Marisa Silver

Mary Coin is the story of two women struggling during the Great Depression. Photographer Vera Dare, who began her career taking formal photographs of the society women of San Francisco, left her children in the care of another family and traveled into the rural parts of California, photographing migrant farm workers. Mary Coin was one of these migrants, a widow with six children who traveled from one California farm to another, working for any employer who would hire a woman for his picking crews. When their paths crossed, Mary was at her lowest point. A freeze had killed the crops she hoped to pick. Her car had broken down and money was scarce. She and her children were dirty, hungry and exhausted, living in a tent. The Great Depression and her husband’s death had taken her from poverty to destitution, from a family who never had anything to a family who had nothing.  Vera took several photographs of Mary and her children. One of these pictures became an iconic symbol of the era. Although Vera became famous, Mary remained anonymous and neither woman profited financially. People and families are shaped in part by their experiences, and in later, more prosperous years, Mary’s children were close and protective of her while Vera’s became distant and cool.  More than seventy years later, Walker Dodge, a college professor, has come to suspect that his family has a connection to the famous photograph. He investigates the evidence, but too much time has passed and he is never able to ferret out the truth.
  

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman

Two thousand years ago Jews fled Jerusalem after the Romans conquered it.   A group of nine hundred fended off the Romans for many months in the desert.  Their struggles are told in this well researched novel.  The book is divided into four sections, each covering a woman with a secret past, all working now in the dovecote on the settlement.  Their lives intersect and relationships,  loves, and misdeeds are revealed.  This magical tale is sure to leave you impressed with these women and their independence.  For readers who loved The Red Tent, are fascinated by the Dead Sea Scrolls and ancient Near Eastern history, or can't get enough of other biblical era historical fiction, The Dovekeepers is a must read!

Benediction by Kent Haruf

We begin with “Dad” Lewis, owner of a local hardware store, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  His devoted wife Mary does all that she can to make Dad comfortable.  The book focuses a lot on glimpses into Dad’s past and we see him grapple with events of which he is not proud as he slips in and out of consciousness.  Soon, the couple’s daughter Lorraine arrives from Denver to help her mother.  But there is fourth presence in the house, an elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss.  The Lewis boy, Frank, ran away from home years ago and is a painful memory for all three relatives.  It is this relationship more than any other that plagues Dad’s thoughts in his final weeks.

Next door, a young girl named Alice moves in with her grandmother.  Her mother has recently passed away from cancer.  Alice is a breath of fresh air for all of the Lewis’s and their friends in a painful time though Dad’s condition often reminds her of her mother.  An elderly widow and her daughter, along with Lorraine Lewis take an interest in the motherless girl and she becomes the center of their simple lives.

Across town, the new preacher is dealing with his own demons.  He’s been removed from a big church in Denver and sent to hole-in-the-wall Holt as a sort of punishment for his outspoken ideas.  His teenage son is devastated to have left all of his friends behind and strikes up a tenuous with a local girl before he begins his sophomore year of high school.  His wife is on the brink of leaving due to the shame of having to leave Denver only to end up in a dusty country town.  But Reverend Lyle just can’t keep his opinions to himself; dividing his congregation in two and turning his family relationships to rubble.

Like in Haruf’s past novels, all of his characters’ lives intertwine in a story that gives a glimpse into one corner of life in a small plains town.  It is the austerity of the everyday that makes this novel such an addictive read.  Readers who appreciated the stark beauty of Haruf’s simple prose in novels such as Plainsong and The Tie That Binds will enjoy the new inhabitants of Holt, Colorado that are visited in Benediction. This book is a story of quiet losses.  Of the pain that people live with every day after a loved one passes or disappears from your life.  Of living each day though sadness and grief may be part of every step.  It is a simple story.  And one that is beautiful because of that simplicity.  

My Ideal Bookshelf

In My Ideal Bookshelf more than one hundred creative individuals share the titles of the books that are most important to them. Artist Jane Mount has painted a bookshelf for each of these lists and a short essay accompanies each shelf. The cultural figures featured in this book are not only writers and editors but also musicians, chefs, actors, photographers, designers and an athlete. Some names are well-known and some are not. This book can be enjoyed in many different ways. The art is so delightful you can enjoy just looking at the pictures. You can find out which books some of your favorite celebrities value. You can see who has read the books you have read. You can keep track of which titles and authors appear most often. You can even create your own bookshelf, photocopying the blank graphic on the back cover.  Fiction, history, biography, philosophy, poetry, science and even children’s books fit on these eclectic celebrity bookshelves and they might also be part of yours!

The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

Pat has goals.  To work on being a kinder person, to get fit and stay buff, to read the great American classic works of literature that he didn't get around to when he was supposed to be reading them in high school, to keep his anger under control, and to get Nikki back.  Actually, all of his goals are really about getting Nikki back and ending apart time.

When Pat's mother comes and gets him from the neural health facility in Baltimore where he's been for... well, he doesn't actually know how long, but awhile, he knows the end of apart time has to be close.  He's out of the bad place and living at home in Philadelphia, where his mom has bought him pretty much a complete gym-in-a-basement, complete with the Stomach Master 6000.  He's got a new therapist, Dr. Patel, and even though his dad's not talking to him (unless it's specifically related to Eagles football), he's building a relationship with his brother and (who got him his old seat back at the Eagles home games) and hanging out with his best bud Ronnie again, even if Ronnie's wife Veronica is not exactly his favorite person.  Sure, his mom claims that all his and Nikki's wedding photos were stolen by a burgler (they were in very expensive frames), and all signs point to him having been in the bad place way longer than a couple of months, but he's pulling it together for Nikki.

So when Veronica's sister Tiffany is invited to dinner one night, Pat is confused.  Tiffany is angry, volatile, uncomfortably direct, swears like a sailor and is more than a little odd.  She's also in therapy, because her husband died a few years ago, and she's also living at home, because she got fired from her job.  Pat is a married man, so even though everyone seems to be encouraging him to cheat on Nikki with Tiffany, which is confusing, he knows he can't date her.  But he does decide to be her friend - after all, it's the kind thing to do.

This is the story of how friendship, love, raisin bran, a deep hatred of Kenny G., modern dance and serious Eagles football fandom all come together to heal two people who need each other.  Quirky, fun, heartbreaking and hilarious, Matthew Quick's first novel is fabulous.  Whether you saw the movie and loved it, want to read the book before you see the movie, or (like me!) are a huge fan of author Matthew Quick (check out our reviews of Sorta Like a Rock Star and this year's Milwaukee County Teen Book Award nominee Boy21!), you've got to add The Silver Linings Playbook to your reading list!  It's the perfect way to kick-start your weekend and ignore the fact that it's snowing... again.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Oskar Schell is nine years old, and his dad, Thomas Schell, died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11.  Awkward, smart, sad, funny, gregarious and determined, Oskar is on a quest to find the one lock in New York City that the key he found in a vase in his dad's closet will unlock, a key he is sure his dad left for him as one more puzzle to solve.  And since, by his calculations, there are approximately 162 million locks in New York, that's a lot of locks to try. Fortunately, the key was in an envelope with the word Black written on it.  Oskar deduces that Black is name, not a color, so the obvious solution is to talk to every person named Black in the city until he finds the one who knew his father - and has the lock that the key will open.

But the mystery of the lock is not the only mystery Oskar will investigate along the way.  There is also the question of what became of his grandfather, who left and disappeared before his dad was born.  And who the silent tenant is renting his grandma's spare bedroom - if he even exists, because no one has ever actually seen him.  Or why his mom thinks it's okay to fall in love again when Oskar still has such heavy boots about his dad.  And why it is that Oskar believes that finding the lock will let him find his dad again.  As Oskar meets more and more Blacks, more stories unfold and intertwine almost as quickly as the mysteries pile up.  Will Oskar find the lock?  What will he find when he does?  Or, perhaps more importantly, who will he find when he finds the answers?

If you're like me, you have rules about movies and books - namely, that the book must must must be read before you see the movie!  This one's been on my list for ages, and I'm so very glad I read it - so glad, I'm not sure how I feel about seeing the movie.  I think I would like Oskar and his family to stay in my heart just as I have them in my head.  Hilarious and heartbreaking, I loved the way the characters' stories unfold and connect in alternating voices, revealing the truth even as more questions arise.  Told with images, color, letters and voicemails, Oskar's journey across the five boroughs of New York and through his own heart will touch yours as you laugh and cry your way through this amazing novel.

Moon Over Edisto by Beth Webb Hart

The Bennett family was happy and loving.  For years, the married couple and their two daughters spent their summers in a little beach house on Edisto Island less than an hour away from their Charleston, South Carolina home.  The girls fished and sailed boats, their mother cooked large, sumptuous meals and their father immersed himself in his favorite hobby: painting.  One summer, the eldest daughter Julia brings her college roommate to stay with the family.  Marney becomes like an adopted daughter, joining in on family activities and working with Julia to save money before going back to college again each fall.  But one summer, something is different.  Marney stands a little too close to Charlie Bennett, drinks from his cup, stares a little too long.  That fall, Charlie announces that he is divorcing Mary Ellen and stays out at the beach house permanently with Marney. 

Before the Bennett’s know it, Marney is expecting a child and Charlie marries her so the two can start a new family.  Heartbroken, the Bennett women all deal with this loss in different ways.  Julia flees to graduate school and then New York City where she has become a famous painter and visual arts teacher at a university.  Second daughter Meg keeps everything in her life as orderly and proper as possible and continues to do so throughout marriage and children.  Mary Ellen takes up a new job in Charleston and becomes a well-respected frame restorer for an antique store.  Each of the women avoids the issue as much as possible, even after Charlie’s death several years later.

Fast forward twenty-five years and the Bennett women have rebuilt their lives in one fashion or another.  Then one evening after Julia is preparing for a large art show, Marney appears at her door in New York.  She has lung cancer and needs Julia to care for her three children while she recovers.  Julia, who has never met her half siblings (and never wanted to) and has a big Fulbright scholarship trip planned to Istanbul in the coming months is convinced that there must be someone else who can care for these children.  After all, Marney ruined her family and years of her happiness.  Julia certainly doesn’t owe her anything.

But Julia changes her mind and returns to South Carolina and the island that she has tried not to think about for years.  Terrified that this trip will destroy her emotionally, she treads very lightly at first.  But when she sees the youngest boy who has her father’s eyes, the middle daughter who loves to draw and paint just as she and her father used to and the serious eldest child who loves to read she finds herself falling in love with the family she never knew. 

Julia may not find all of the answers to her questions, but by returning to Edisto she does more for herself and the three children than she’d ever imagined.  Moon Over Edisto is full of the southern Gothic and emotional pull of a complicated family saga.  Most of Hart's books take place in Charleston or the South Carolina lowlands and anyone who has ever visited will tell you her portrayal is as real as it gets.  This book isn't all southern belles and sweet tea, but it is chock full of charm and personal growth.

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani

After a horrific scandal tears her family apart, sheltered, headstrong, fifteen-year-old Thea Atwell is banished from her beloved childhood home on a citrus farm in Florida to the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, isolated deep in the North Carolina mountains.  Forced to leave behind her twin brother, Sam, her older cousin Georgie, and, perhaps worst of all, her beloved pony, Sasi, Thea is exiled from everyone and everything she has ever known.

With the Great Depression just beginning, Thea and the other girls at camp, all the daughters of wealthy Southern men, are sheltered from the worst of the storm tearing apart the rest of the nation.  Although Thea hates that she has been sent away from Sam, Georgie, Sasi, and the Florida heat, the mountains of North Carolina are spectacular, she is surrounded by horses, for the first time is receiving formal equestrian instruction, and is discovering how to makes friends with girls her own age.  Although her arrival so late in the summer means gossip about trouble with a boy at home is rampant among the Yonahlossee girls, the real reason behind Thea's late enrollment is known only by the headmaster, Henry Holmes, and his wife Beth, an old boarding school friend of Thea's mother.  Free to start fresh, Thea must decide if she can forgive herself for what happened - and her family for refusing to forgive her - and become a new, different girl, or if she will allow her desires for the things she cannot have to once again consume her.

This suspenseful family drama slowly reveals its secrets against the spectacular scenery of the Appalachian mountains and the late summer heat of Florida.  Beautifully written, anyone who loves period drama, Southern fiction, or can't resist a boarding school coming-of-age story (really, who can? And this one has horses!) should put The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls on their summer reading list!

The Yonahlassee Riding Camp for Girls will be published on June 4, 2013.  The library received its advance reading copy from the publisher.  Check CountyCat in late spring to place a hold on this Southern novel!

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Achilles was the golden boy of Greek myth. The son of a sea nymph and mortal king, he was handsome and intelligent, as skilled in the arts as in athletics. The Song of Achilles is the story of his life and death told by his friend Patroclus. As boys the two were educated together and, despite differences in interests and abilities, became close companions. When Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta, was kidnapped and taken to Troy, the princes of Greece were bound by oath to reclaim her. Achilles and Patroclus joined the fight. For nine years the Greek armies besieged the city but were unable to breach the walls. The Trojans defended their city but were unable to drive the Greeks away. This stalemate continued until, in the tenth year, King Agamemnon insulted Achilles, causing him to withdraw his forces. Consequently, the Greek armies suffered great losses. Only after the death of Patroclus, who was fighting in Achilles’ place, was Achilles able to overlook his wounded pride and return to battle. Achilles was killed but the tide had turned and the war was won in the tenth year.  This book is a modern prose retelling of Greek mythological stories and Homer’s Iliad.