Second Half of 2019 Book Selections Please choose your favorite FOUR (4) Every Note Played by Lisa Genova (2018)
Heartwrenching and sympathetic Modern-day confronting mortality Description: A once-celebrated concert pianist who is gradually succumbing to ALS is forced to accept help from the estranged wife he pushed away, a situation that forces the couple to reconcile their past before time runs out.
Review: Neurologist Genova, author of Still Alice shines a light on another devastating neurological disorder, ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Gifted concert pianist Richard Evans has nurtured his career and talent at the expense of personal relationships. Then, at 45, he’s diagnosed with ALS, a fatal disease that causes the death of the neurons that control muscles. As Richard’s disease progresses and robs him of his career and the use of his arms, he stubbornly refuses to accept help from anyone aside from paid caregivers. But eventually, he is forced to lean on his ex-wife Karina, whose aspirations of becoming a jazz pianist were sacrificed so that Richard’s career could thrive. Karina reluctantly brings Richard back to the home they once shared and becomes his full-time caregiver as he loses the use of his legs and voice. Genova expertly details the devastation ALS wreaks on Richard, and though her latest is a sometimes difficult read, she finds hope in the opportunities Richard has to repair his relationships with his daughter and brothers before it’s too late.
Pachinko by Min Jen Lee (2017)
Family saga that is character-driven Set in Korea and Japan Description: In early 1900s Korea, prized daughter Sunja finds herself pregnant and alone, bringing shame on her family until a young tubercular minister offers to marry her and move with her to Japan, in the saga of one family bound together as their faith and identity are called into question. Review: Set in Korea and Japan, Lee's follow-up to her acclaimed debut, Free Food for Millionaires, is a beautifully crafted story of love, loss, determination, luck, and perseverance. Sunja is the only surviving child of humble fisherman Hoonie (himself born with a cleft palate and twisted foot) and wife YangJin in the early 1900s. Losing her father at age 13, Sunja appears to be a dutiful daughter by working at the boardinghouse with her mother, only to surprise the family three years later by becoming pregnant by an older married man with children. She saves face when a minister at the boardinghouse, ten years older than Sunja, offers to marry her and take her to Japan with him to start a new life. What follows is a gripping multigenerational story that culminates in 1989. There are surprising twists, especially when Sunja crosses paths with her former lover while living in Japan. Lee's skillful development of her characters and story lines will draw readers into the work. Those who enjoy historical fiction with strong
Second Half of 2019 Book Selections Please choose your favorite FOUR (4) characterizations will not be disappointed as they ride along on the emotional journeys offered in the author's latest page-turner.
Before We Were Yours / Lisa Wingate (2017)
Bittersweet and heartwrenching Set in modern-day and 1920’s through 1950s Description: A tale inspired by firsthand accounts about the notoriously corrupt Tennessee Children's Home Society follows the efforts of a Baltimore assistant D.A. to uncover her parents' fateful secrets in the wake of a political attack and a chance encounter with a stranger. Review: Newly engaged Avery Stafford leaves her job as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., to go back home to South Carolina, where she is being groomed to succeed her ailing father, a U.S. senator. At a meet-and-greet at a nursing home, she encounters May, a woman who seems to have some link with Avery’s Grandma Judy, now suffering from dementia. The reader learns early on that May was once Rill Foss, one of five siblings snatched from their shanty home on the Mississippi and taken to the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. The society seems too Dickensian to be true, except that it was, and its black-market adoption practices caused a stir in the mid-twentieth century. Rill’s harrowing account of what befell the Foss children and Avery’s piecing together (with the help of a possible new love interest) of how Rill and Grandma Judy’s stories converge are skillfully blended. Wingate (The Sea Keeper’s Daughters, 2015) writes with flair, and her distinctly drawn characters and adept use of the adoption scandal will keep readers turning the pages.
Great Alone / Kristin Hannah (2018)
Descriptive and engaging with a strong sense of place Set in 1970s Alaska Description: When her father impulsively moves the family to mid-1970s Alaska to live off the land, young Leni and her mother are forced to confront the dangers of their lack of preparedness in the wake of a dangerous winter season. Review: Hannah (The Nightingale, 2015) takes readers on a journey to Alaska in the 1970s with the Allbright family: damaged Vietnam vet Ernt; his devoted wife, Cora; and their 13-year-old daughter, Leni, the novel’s protagonist. Initially unhappy to leave her Seattle home, Leni soon falls in love with the wilds of remote Kaneq. Leni adjusts to the lack of electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing, but her father’s increasingly erratic and violent behavior is much harder to endure. Leni finds an escape in her books and her one-room school, where she meets Matthew, the only other kid her age in the area. Matthew becomes Leni’s best friend and eventually her first love. But Leni’s father’s irrational hatred of Matthew’s family threatens to keep them
Second Half of 2019 Book Selections Please choose your favorite FOUR (4) apart, and Leni fears her father’s uncontrollable rage could be the death of her and her fragile mother. Though smaller in scope than her previous blockbuster, in this tightly focused drama, Hannah vividly evokes the natural beauty and danger of Alaska and paints a compelling portrait of a family in crisis and a community on the brink of change.
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane / Lisa See (2017)
Culturally diverse character-driven storyline with a strong female protagonist Set in a remote Chinese village in 1949 Description: Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate, the first automobile any of them have seen and a stranger arrives. In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her readers. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change. Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock, rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city. Review: Li-Yan is the youngest daughter of an Ahka family near Nannuo Mountain in China in 1949. She tries to follow Ahka law, the rules set forth by the beliefs of this ethnic minority, but at every turn she seems to find herself doing the opposite: An Ahka girl must obey and learn from her mother, but Li-Yan studies hard at a modern school. Although an Ahka girl should not speak to men, when foreigners arrive from Hong Kong in search of a renowned, aged tea called Pu’er, Li-Yan is the only one who can translate. If an Ahka girl gets pregnant, she must marry the boy, but when Li-Yan gives birth, the ather is gone. And, according to Ahka law, a child born outside of marriage must be killed. But Li-Yan cannot bring herself to do it. Instead, she leaves her daughter at the doorstep of an orphanage. While Li-Yan matures into a successful tea master, the daughter, Haley, is adopted into a white American family in Los Angeles, and her existence is revealed in sporadic letters, school reports, and, later, emails. These sections capture both Haley’s desire to fully integrate into her adopted family and her curiosity and heartache about her mother and the only clue she left behind: a tea cake. With vivid and precise details about tea and life in rural China, Li-Yan’s gripping journey to find her daughter comes alive.
Second Half of 2019 Book Selections Please choose your favorite FOUR (4) Where the Crawdads Sing / Delia Owens (2018)
Leisurely-paced, romantic tone for a coming-of-age story with a strong sense of place North Carolina in the ‘50s and ‘60s Description: For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life--until the unthinkable happens. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps. Review: In Owens’s evocative debut, Kya Clark is a young woman growing up practically on her own in the wild marshes outside Barkley Cove, a small coastal community in North Carolina. In 1969, local lothario Chase Andrews is found dead, and Kya, now 23 and known as the “Marsh Girl,” is suspected of his murder. As the local sheriff and his deputy gather evidence against her, the narrative flashes back to 1952 to tell Kya’s story. Abandoned at a young age by her mother, she is left in the care of her hard-drinking father. Unable to fit in at school, Kya grows up ignorant until a shrimper’s son, Tate Walker, befriends her and teaches her how to read. After Tate goes off to college, Kya meets Chase, with whom she begins a tempestuous relationship. The novel culminates in a long trial, with Kya’s fate hanging in the balance. Kya makes for an unforgettable heroine. Owens memorably depicts the small-town drama and courtroom theatrics, but perhaps best of all is her vivid portrayal of the singular North Carolina setting.