The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

Lane Roanoke is only fifteen years old when her mother commits suicide. With nowhere else to go, Lane moves in with her maternal grandparents and cousin Allegra on their farm in rural Kansas. Knowing little about her extended family, Lane is excited at the prospects of having a family to care for her. Lane quickly embraces life as a Roanoke, but it isn't long before Lane realizes that the Roanoke family has a dark secret to keep; one that sends her running far away from the small farming town in Kansas.

Years later, Lane still figuring out her life, receives a phone call from her grandfather telling Lane that her cousin Allegra has gone missing. Has Allegra run away like the Roanoke girls before her or is it something more sinister? Unable to get Allegra out of her mind, Lane returns to help ease the guilt she feels after having left Allegra behind. While Lane's homecoming means a chance for second chances, it also means that she must face the Roanoke secret that made her run.

Weaving between now and then, The Roanoke Girls is filled with twists and turns, exploring the lengths at which families will go to keep their deep, dark secrets and the love that they share.

LaRose by Louise Erdrich

National Book Award Winner Louise Erdrich begins her new novel, LaRose, with a punch to the gut: a hunting accident involving Landreaux Iron results in the death of his neighbor’s five-year-old son Dusty Ravich.  The two families had been close; the mothers were half-sisters, the five-year-old sons best friends.  Grief works in different ways on the two families and soon the Irons decide to honor an ancient tradition in order to make up for the Ravichs’ loss.  The Iron’s give their five-year-old son LaRose to the Ravich family.  Between a sweeping history of the four previous generations of LaRoses, and the story of Landreaux Iron’s past, Erdrich weaves a tale of loss and love.  LaRose grows to be a bond between the two families, helping them process their grief.  This deeply emotional read is another powerful novel from a talented award-winning author.

Some Luck by Jame Smiley

Jane Smiley’s newest novel is the first in The Last Hundred Years trilogy.  The Pulitzer prize winning author intends to cover 100 years in the life of an Iowa farm family and the first novel, Some Luck, covers the years 1920-1953.  Smiley follows the Langdon family of Denby, Iowa through childbirth, death, the Great Depression and World War II in a unique fashion.  Not only does the author write from many of the different characters points of view, but each chapter itself represents one year. 

We begin with Walter, the 25 year-old father and owner of the farm.  His wife Rosanna is about to give birth to their first child, Frank, and he is ruminating on all of the things that farmers think about: which crops to plant this year, how many animals are there to take care of and can I really afford to farm all of this land? As the years move forward, Smiley introduces us to all of the Langdon children: Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire and their unique personalities.  We see Walter struggle with changing technologies (horses vs. tractors) and Rosanna has her own challenges with loss and religion. 

Each of the Langdon children is different than the last, and we hear a lot from the point of view of Frank, the handsomest and, arguably, the most cunning Langdon child.  When the US gets involved in World War II, he joins the army and becomes a sniper while his sensitive younger brother Joe stays home on a II-A deferment and takes care of the family farm.  Lillian falls in love with a handsome stranger and Henry devours books as fast as he can get his hands on them.  The reader is quickly absorbed into the world that Smiley creates and is soon laughing and crying along with the family. 

Some Luck has been shortlisted for the National Book Award and is a profound family saga.

America America by Ethan Cain

Corey Sifter becomes a yard boy for a powerful family in the early 1970s.  The patriarch, Liam Metarey, campaigns for United States senator Henry Bonwiller, who he hopes will become the next president.  Everything is going well until the senator’s bad choices catch up with him and a campaign worker is found frozen to death in an orchard.  This stunning novel goes between different time periods with ease.  Corey is an unreliable narrator at times with his words clouded by his respect for the Metareys.  Not all the questions are answered and the reader must make up their own mind as to what they think really happened that cold night.  Check out America America @the library!

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.  

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 Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig

On the eve of the 21st century, Clementine Evans's life is falling apart.  Her engagement has just been broken off, her very proper and conventional mother is horrified, her step-cousin, the irksome Jon, is back in town, she's a slave to her law firm in a desperate race to make partner, and her beloved Granny Addie is seriously ill.  When Addie confusedly calls Clemmie by the name Bea, a whole closet full of skeletons and dark family secrets is cracked open.

In 1926 Africa, Addie is taking the train to see her once-favorite cousin Bea at her coffee farm in Kenya.  Engaged to be engaged, Addie isn't even sure why she has come all the way to the sun-soaked African savanna from the foggy streets of London to see Bea, who she hasn't seen or spoken to in years.  Cut off from the aristocratic family that took her in as an orphaned, poor cousin after the epic scandal of Bea's marriage to Frederick Desborough, Addie knows she must see the woman who was once her best friend before she marries the scholarly (and, quite frankly, boring) David.  And, even though she has quite firmly told herself otherwise, she knows she has really come to see Frederick again - Frederick, who once held all her hopes and her heart, and is now her cousin's husband.

From the author of the Pink Carnation spy novels comes this lavish period drama that fans of Downton Abbey will love to while away a weekend with!  Clemmie and Addie's stories are a tangled web of secrets, lies, and family drama that unfold in chapters alternating between 1999 New York and London and the champagne-soaked 1920s London and colonial Kenya.  With a dash of humor and quick wit, star-crossed romance that's absolutely worth the wait, and a generous dose of crazy family, anyone who loves a good generational saga will want to add The Ashford Affair to their spring reading list!

The Ashford Affair will be published on April 9, 2013.  The library received its advanced reader's copy from the publisher.  Watch CountyCat for this great read to be added so you can place a hold!