Georgia

Bonnie said, "Here's another one for the state of Georgia. I've written a review of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore on my blog."

The narrator is Catherine Grace Cline, a teenager who wants more than anything in this world to get out of the little town of Ringgold, Georgia. Her daddy is the preacher at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, which was founded by Catherine Grace's great-granddaddy William Floyd Cline, who had been "one of the most prolific bootleggers the state of Georgia has ever known" (p. 12). "William Floyd found the Lord somewhere in the congregation's third singing of the fourth verse of 'Just As I Am" (p. 13), and within days he was "sermonizing from his own makeshift pulpit next to a grove of cedar trees" (p. 14). When he died, his son took over the pulpit, and now Catherine Grace's daddy was the current Reverend Cline. A humorous look at one girl's desire to reach the big city of Atlanta.
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Maybe this will explain my long absence from this blog. Please re-submit any book suggestions you've made that I failed to get posted.
Thanks,
~~~ Bonnie

California

Judy said, "Here is the link to my first state book: 1st to Die by James Patterson." The book is set in California.

First to Die is the first in the Women's Murder Club series of books by James Patterson. Four women -- four friends -- share a determination to stop a killer who has been stalking newlyweds in San Francisco. Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant D.A., and Cindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle. But the usual procedures aren't bringing them any closer to stopping the killings. So these women form a Women's Murder Club to collaborate outside the box and pursue the case by sidestepping their bosses and giving each other a hand. The four women develop intense bonds as they pursue a killer whose crimes have stunned an entire city. Working together, they track down the most terrifying and unexpected killer they have ever encountered -- before a shocking conclusion in which everything they knew turns out to be devastatingly wrong.

Wisconsin

Jill said, "And another Christina Schwartz book for Wisconsin. I just finished So Long At The Fair, and it was an excellent story set in modern Wisconsin." Here's Jill's review.

In the summer of 1963 a plot for revenge destroys a career, a friendship, and a family. The consequences of the scandalous event continue to reverberate, touching the next generation. Thirty years later, over the course of one day, Jon struggles to decide whether to end his affair or his marriage. His wife, Ginny, moving closer to discovering his adultery, begins working for an older man who is mysteriously connected to their families’ pasts. And Jon’s mistress is being courted by a suitor who may be more menacing than he initially seems. As relationships among the characters ebb and flow on that July day, Christina Schwarz illuminates the ties that bind people together — and the surprising risks they take in the name of love.

New York

Laurie suggests: "NY: The Honey Thief by Elizabeth Graver. See my review here."

The summer that eleven-year-old Eva is caught shoplifting (for the fourth time), her mother, Miriam, decides the only solution is to move out of the city to a quiet town in upstate New York. There, she hopes, they can have the normal life she longs for. But Miriam is bound by a past she is trying to forget, and tensions escalate. It is only when Eva meets a reclusive beekeeper that she-and her mother-can find their way back to each other, and can begin life with renewed promise. A haunting novel of memory and desire, The Honey Thief reveals the healing power of friendship and the ineradicable bonds of mother and child.

California

Laurie suggests: "CA: Self-Portrait with Ghosts by Kelly Dwyer. See my review here."

Self-Portrait with Ghosts is about the pain that leads to suicide, as well as the pain that suicide leaves behind. It is about the many ways we betray the people closest to us, sometimes without even knowing it, and about the healing powers of grief, forgiveness, and love. Kate Flannigan has done pretty well for herself. After a disaster of a first marriage, she's going with a great guy who is crazy about her, she has raised a loving, if slightly rebellious, teenage daughter, and has made a name for herself as a ceramist, an accomplished sculptor of portraits. She has worked hard to meet the demands of single motherhood and, at the same time, to put her sister Colleen's betrayal behind her. Kate's brother, Luke, hasn't done so well. Haunted by the early death of his father, he has struggled with depression for most of his life, and kept it a secret from his family. Only Audrey, Kate's daughter, is able to crack through her uncle's solitude. To her, Luke isn't just a substitute for the father who left years ago -- he is the only person she believes will always tell her the truth. When Luke commits suicide, the family is forced to reexamine the deceptions that have torn it apart, and to face and forgive the past and present, the real and imagined ghosts. The story is told through three compelling voices -- Kate's, Audrey's, and Luke's.

Connecticut

Bonnie said, "Nobody has suggested a book for Connecticut, so I started looking around for one and found Sacred Cows by Karen E. Olson. I know absolutely nothing about it except what I found online. It was the winner of the first Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award and it features Annie Seymour, a police reporter for a New Haven daily who is covering the murder of a young woman who was a student at Yale. Has anyone read this book?"

"After a late night on the town, New Haven police reporter Annie Seymour is yanked from her bed by an early morning phone call from her editor. Soon she's shivering on a wet, dark city street, staring down at the once beautiful, now broken body of a Yale University coed." "Paid to observe and get just the facts before writing up her stories for the New Haven Herald, Annie finds herself drawn to the story of an Ivy League sophomore whose secret moonlighting led to her violent murder. But after Annie links the girl's death to a network of vice and fraud buried deep in the city's shadows, the cynical reporter is shocked to discover her own mother is involved." "With help from a sexy private investigator, Annie investigates but stumbles upon one obstacle after another. Her cop lover stonewalls her, her editor pulls her off the assignment to cover a surreal parade of fiberglass cows grazing throughout the city, and an overeager cub reporter nips at her heels to get the scoop for himself." Caught in the center of a treacherous scheme, Annie must take the biggest gamble of her career - outwit a dangerous con man to uncover the truth that could win her that elusive Pulitzer ... or a mention in the next day's obituary.

Utah

3M suggested: "Utah * The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (Pulitzer)."

The Executioner's Song is a 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Norman Mailer that depicts the events surrounding the execution of Gary Gilmore by the state of Utah for murder. This story of the crimes and punishment of a 20th-century murderer and thief is what the author calls a "true-life novel." It is a horrifying, sad, scrupulously detailed look at the events leading up to the moment Gary Gilmore was killed by a firing squad in Utah State Prison on January 17, 1977. Based on interviews, records of court proceedings, newspaper stories, and various other documents, it covers the nine months between Gilmore's parole from prison, his final crime, and his execution.

The blurring of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction was one of the central developments of postwar American literature, and Mailer's imaginative use of the facts is an extension of his earlier forays into the "new journalism." He re-creates Gillmore's tormented psyche, recounts his crimes, takes in the story of Mormonism and the history of Utah, introduces Uncle Vern, Aunt Ida, victims, cops, cons, guards, lovers, and lawyers. The "Western Voices" of small-town America and the "Eastern Voices" of the journalists and show-biz types who descend on the Gilmore story are fused into a remarkable chorus, amplifying the presence of Gilmore himself, a smart, funny, doomed man -- one of the most complex characters in modern letters.

Pennsylvania

3M suggested (a year ago): "There are some Pulitzers that are set in these states, but I have no idea if the setting is integral to the book." One she named was Rabbit at Rest by John Updike.

In John Updike's fourth and final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically; his daughter-in-law, Pru, is sending out mixed signals; and his wife, Janice, decides in mid-life to become a working girl. As Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live.

Bonnie added: "Some may prefer to read a series of books in the order published, but I think I'd be more interested in the older Rabbit than the young Rabbit playing basketball or the young married Rabbit cheating on his wife. I think I could relate better to an older man. And this may be the best in the series because, after all, it was Rabbit at Rest that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991."

Virginia

Teddy Rose suggested (way back in February): "VA: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver and Steven L. Hopp." Teddy's review.

Hang on for the ride: with characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life, and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

Wisconsin

Laurie suggests: "WI: Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz. My review is here."

Winter, 1919. Amanda Starkey spends her days nursing soldiers wounded in the Great War. Finding herself suddenly overwhelmed, she flees Milwaukee and retreats to her family's farm on Nagawaukee Lake, seeking comfort with her younger sister, Mathilda, and three-year-old niece, Ruth. But very soon, Amanda comes to see that her old home is no refuge--she has carried her troubles with her. On one terrible night almost a year later, Amanda loses nearly everything that is dearest to her when her sister mysteriously disappears and is later found drowned beneath the ice that covers the lake. When Mathilda's husband comes home from the war, wounded and troubled himself, he finds that Amanda has taken charge of Ruth and the farm, assuming her responsibility with a frightening intensity. Wry and guarded, Amanda tells the story of her family in careful doses, as anxious to hide from herself as from us the secrets of her own past and of that night.

Ruth, haunted by her own memory of that fateful night, grows up under the watchful eye of her prickly and possessive aunt and gradually becomes aware of the odd events of her childhood. As she tells her own story with increasing clarity, she reveals the mounting toll that her aunt's secrets exact from her family and everyone around her, until the heartrending truth is uncovered. Guiding us through the lives of the Starkey women, Christina Schwarz's first novel shows her compassion and a unique understanding of the American landscape and the people who live on it.