Vermont

Jill said, "Hi, Bonnie! I finished my Vermont read: The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian, and here is my review."

When college sophomore Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography and begins to work at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies suddenly, Laurel discovers that he was telling the truth: before he was homeless, Bobbie Crocker was a successful photographer who had indeed worked with such legends as Chuck Berry, Robert Frost, and Eartha Kitt. As Laurel’s fascination with Bobbie’s former life begins to merge into obsession, she becomes convinced that some of his photographs reveal a deeply hidden, dark family secret. Her search for the truth will lead her further from her old life — and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her.

Illinois

Lisalit said, "What about Illinois? I know lots of books that are set in Chicago, my hometown! The Time Traveler's Wife is set both in Chicago and Michigan. Crossing California by Adam Langer is an excellent Chicago read. There are plenty of others: The House on Mango Street. Devil in a White City. The Jungle."

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger's cinematic storytelling that makes the novel's unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant. And how does this fit Illinois? Henry De Tamble is librarian at the famous Newberry Library in Chicago.

Set in Chicago's Jewish neighborhood of West Rogers Park, Crossing California by Adam Langer is the story of three families — adults and children alike — coming of age during the tumultuous, turbulent days of the Iran hostage crisis. At the close of the 1970s, the Rovners, the Wasserstroms, and the Wills-Silvermans will have to shed their pasts to cross into that new, shining decade of hope: the 80s.


Told in a series of vignettes stunning for their eloquence, The House on Mango Street is Sandra Cisneros's greatly admired novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children, their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, it has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong -- not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both. To find outmore about this book, go to http://www.DevilInTheWhiteCity.com.

Upton Sinclair’s muckraking masterpiece The Jungle centers on Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant working in Chicago’s infamous Packingtown. Instead of finding the American Dream, Rudkus and his family inhabit a brutal, soul-crushing urban jungle dominated by greedy bosses, pitiless con-men, and corrupt politicians. While Sinclair’s main target was the industry’s appalling labor conditions, the reading public was most outraged by the disgusting filth and contamination in American food that his novel exposed. As a result, President Theodore Roosevelt demanded an official investigation, which quickly led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug laws. For a work of fiction to have such an impact outside its literary context is extremely rare. (At the time of The Jungle’s publication in 1906, the only novel to have led to social change on a similar scale in America was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) Today, The Jungle remains a relevant portrait of capitalism at its worst and an impassioned account of the human spirit facing nearly insurmountable challenges.

New Mexico

Bonnie said, "The Night Journal by Elizabeth Crook was recommended to me by a friend. I read about the book online and think it could fit here, so let's add it as a possibility for New Mexico."

Meg Mabry has spent her life with her back turned to her legendary family legacy. In the 1890s her great-grandmother Hannah Bass composed starkly revealing diaries of her life on the southwestern frontier, first as a Harvey Girl at the glamorous Montezuma Resort in New Mexico and later as the wife of brilliant, and often-absent, railway engineer Eliott Bass. A generation later, Hannah's daughter, Claudia Bass, renowned historian known to all as Bassie, staked her academic career and reputation on these vibrant accounts, editing and publishing them to great acclaim. Thanks to the journals and to the industry Bassie created around them, Hannah would forever be one of the most romantic and famous figures of southwestern history.

Meg, however-Bassie's granddaughter-finds the family lore oppressive. When an excavation on the old Bass family property beckons a now-elderly and viper-tongued Bassie back to the fabled land of her childhood, Meg only grudgingly consents to accompany her. Determined not to live under the shadow of her ancestry, Meg has never even read the journals. But when an unexpected discovery casts doubt on the history recorded in their pages and harbored in Bassie's memories, Meg finally succumbs to the allure of her great grandmother's story and ventures even deeper into Hannah's life to unlock the mystery at the journal's core.

Massachusetts

Kristina said, "Bonnie, I finished Blackbird House a few days ago and wanted to send you the link to my post for the States Challenge website. I don't think this book has been mentioned for Massachusetts yet."

Blackbird House is an evocative novel that traces the lives of the various occupants of an old Massachusetts house over a span of two hundred years. Alice Hoffman weaves a web of tales, all set in Blackbird House. This small farm on the outer reaches of Cape Cod is a place that is as bewitching and alive as the characters we meet: Violet, a brilliant girl who is in love with books and with a man destined to betray her; Lysander Wynn, attacked by a halibut as big as a horse, certain that his life is ruined until a boarder wearing red boots arrives to change everything; Maya Cooper, who does not understand the true meaning of the love between her mother and father until it is nearly too late. From the time of the British occupation of Massachusetts to our own modern world, family after family’s lives are inexorably changed, not only by the people they love but by the lives they lead inside Blackbird House.

Michigan

Jill said, "Hi, Bonnie: I finished Middlesex for this challenge, which was set in Detroit, Michigan. While I was disappointed with the book, I did learn a lot about Detroit throughout the 20th century, and that part was interesting. Here's my review."

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides was the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was nominated for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, and was a 2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Transgender. Just threw that in to counter Jill's disappointment with the book.

In the spring of 1974, Calliope Stephanides, a student at a girls' school in Grosse Pointe, finds herself drawn to a chain-smoking, strawberry blond classmate with a gift for acting. The passion that furtively develops between them, along with Callie's failure to develop, leads Callie to suspect that she is not like other girls. In fact, she is not really a girl at all.

The explanation for this shocking state of affairs takes us out of suburbia, back before the Detroit race riots of 1967, before the rise of the Motor City and Prohibition, to 1922, when the Turks sacked Smyrna and Callie's grandparents fled for their lives. Back to a tiny village in Asia Minor where two lovers, and one rare genetic mutation, set in motion the metamorphosis that will turn Callie into a being both mythical and perfectly real: a hermaphrodite.

Spanning eight decades and one unusually awkward adolescence, this novel is a grand, utterly original fable of crossed bloodlines, the intricacies of gender, and the deep, untidy promptings of desire.
__________

Teddy Rose has also reviewed Middlesex.

How to join this challenge

All you have to do to join the challenge is make yourself a list of what you want to read. You may change the list at any time, add to it, take away yucky choices, or add books one at a time as you read them. Post your questions on the blog, so the answers will help other bloggers. When you finish a good book, tell us about it. If you provide a link to your actual post about a book, I'll add the link so others may see what you thought about the book. Suggest titles of books you run across, especially ones that you think are good. Share your thoughts with us by clicking on COMMENTS below any of the posts you happen to be reading, and I'll be notified that I have a comment.

I'll probably never know how many people around the world are doing this challenge, but that's okay. I think we should help each other, but many are afraid to post their names online. It's okay to use an alias or screen name. It's okay to be anonymous. But it's also okay to say, "This is what I think about the book." Then tell us. Was it wonderful? awful? so-so? a keeper? What did you like about it? I have a set of book review questions on my other blog ... Bonnie's Books ... which I should probably post on ALL my bookish blogs. You'll find it in the links below my icon: Book review outline.

New Hampshire

Jill said, "I finished Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult, which is set in NH. Here's my review."

In nineteen minutes, you can mow the front lawn, color your hair, watch a third of a hockey game. In nineteen minutes, you can bake scones or get a tooth filled by a dentist; you can fold laundry for a family of five. ... In nineteen minutes, you can stop the world, or you can just jump off it. In nineteen minutes, you can get revenge.

Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens — until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing, but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who — if anyone — has the right to judge someone else?

Kentucky

Framed said, "Josh Akers wrote this review on Amazon about River of Earth by James Still: 'James Still has exquisitely and intricately chronicled what it is like to be born, live, and die in the hills of eastern Kentucky. Natives of the region will read the book and feel attached to the book if by nothing else but the geography. Others will be drawn into the book by the sincerity and realism of the characters. Still, the poet laureate of Kentucky, beautifully relates the attachment of eastern Kentuckians to the mountain soil in spite of the poverty and hard living that they must endure. More than that, however, it is a story of inspiration and coming of age. I highly recommend it to anyone.'"

River of Earth by James Still chronicles the poverty of early 20th century Appalachian coal miners and their struggle to care for their families, make ends meet, and maintain their humanity in an industry that provides only obstacles. The story is seen through the eyes of a small boy and covers three years in the life of his family and their kin.

Montana

Framed said, "I just read English Creek by Ivan Doig, which is set in late-Depression era Montana. Like your other Montana suggestion, it involves the U S Forest Service and a host of other memorable characters. The narrator, a fourteen-year-old boy named Jick is particularly well-written."

In this prizewinning portrait of a time and place — Montana in the 1930s — that at once inspires and fulfills a longing for an explicable past, Ivan Doig has created one of the most captivating families in American fiction, the McCaskills. The witty and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the tradition of Twain, follows the events of the Two Medicine country's summer: the tide of sheep moving into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and community dance, and an end-of-August forest fire high in the Rockies that brings the book, as well as the McCaskill family's struggle within itself, to a stunning climax. It is a season of escapade as well as drama, during which fourteen-year-old Jick comes of age. Through his eyes we see those nearest and dearest to him at a turning point — "where all four of our lives made their bend" — and discover along with him his own connection to the land, to history, and to the deep-fathomed mysteries of one's kin and one's self.

Ohio

Framed said, "Lynne also suggested The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio by Terry Ryan for Ohio. It's about a woman who supports her ten children in the fifties and sixties by entering contests. The comments on Amazon were very positive. I've added it to my list and even bookmooched it."

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less by Terry Ryan introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Evelyn's winning ways defied the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her, flouting convention was a small price to pay when it came to raising her six sons and four daughters. Graced with a rare appreciation for life's inherent hilarity, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for fun and profit. The story of this irrepressible woman, whose clever entries are worthy of Erma Bombeck, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, is told by her daughter Terry with an infectious joy that shows how a winning spirit will always triumph over poverty.

Indiana

Framed said, "I found In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd for Indiana. It's a humorous novel and I need some laughter right now. I may have to do this challenge twice."

Jean Shepherd was a master writer who spun the materials of his all-American childhood into immensely resonant —and utterly hilarious — works of comic art. In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash represents one of the peaks of his achievement, a compound of irony, affection, and perfect detail that speaks across generations. Shepherd's wildly witty reunion with his Indiana hometown disproves the adage "You can never go back." Bending the ear of Flick, his childhood-buddy-turned-bartender, Shepherd recalls passionately his genuine Red Ryder BB gun, confesses adolescent failure in the arms of Junie Jo Prewitt, and relives a story of man against fish that not even Hemingway could rival. From pop art to the World's Fair, Shepherd's subjects speak with a universal irony and are deeply and unabashedly grounded in American Midwestern life, together rendering a wonderfully nostalgic impression of a more innocent era when life was good, fun was clean, and station wagons roamed the earth. Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri. And by the way, the movie "A Christmas Story" is based on a single chapter of this book.
__________

Jill said, "I read this book too! Here is my review. Quite funny and great look at Indiana during the depression."

Massachusetts

Framed said, "I listed Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick for my Massachusetts book. Probably because I own it, but I've heard good things about it also."

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick tracks the Pilgrims from their perilous 1620 transatlantic crossing to the bloody battles of King Philip's War (1675-76). With compelling detail, he describes the delicate social ecology achieved by the Pilgrims and Native Americans before it was broken by a deadly war of attrition. His carefully modulated story blends acts of settler courage and kindness with those of savagery and cowardice. The Mayflower Compact degenerated into a divisive debate of war and peace. Captain Miles Standish, military advisor for the Pilgrims, argued for a ruthless bellicosity, while Edward Winslow, a deputy governor of Plymouth Colony, sought a negotiated settlement with the Indians. A major nonfiction work. Nathaniel Philbrick is the author of the New York Times bestseller In the Heart of the Sea, which won the National Book Award, and Sea of Glory, winner of the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize.

New Jersey

3M said, "There are some Pulitzers that are set in these states, but I have no idea if the setting is integral to the book: New Jersey - American Pastoral by Philip Roth (I don't like Roth, but it’s a Pulitzer) ... Independence Day by Richard Ford (Pulitzer)."

In American Pastoral by Philip Roth, Seymour "Swede" Levov — a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, a hard worker, the prosperous inheritor of his father's Newark glove factory — comes of age in thriving, triumphant postwar America. But everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s. Not even the most private, well-intentioned citizens, it seems, get to sidestep the sweep of history. American Pastoral is the story of a fortunate American's rise and fall — of a strong, confident master of social equilibrium overwhelmed by the forces of social disorder. For the Swede is not allowed to stay forever blissful inside the beloved hundred-and-seventy-year-old stone farmhouse, in rural Old Rimrock, where he lives with his pretty wife — the college sweetheart who was Miss New Jersey of 1949 — and the lively, precocious daughter who is the apple of his eye. The apple of his eye, that is, until she grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father's paradise. American Pastoral presents a vivid portrait of how the innocence of Swede Levov is swept away by the times — of how everything industriously created by his family in America over three generations is left in a shambles by the explosion of a bomb in his own bucolic backyard.

Independence Day is essentially an internal monologue, set on the long July 4th weekend of 1988. In this sequel to The Sportswriter, the protagonist is Frank Bascombe, a divorced, well-educated former sportswriter who now makes his living selling real estate in the affluent New Jersey town of Haddam, while supplementing his earnings with a couple of rental properties he owns in the town's African American neighborhood. While Frank is trying to give his disinterested son a civics lesson on the meaning of Independence Day, Paul feigns confusion and asks a question or two, which Frank knows were really meant to mock him. Paul delights at ridiculing the hall of fame.

Massachusetts

3M said, "There are some Pulitzers that are set in these states, but I have no idea if the setting is integral to the book: Massachusetts - The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand (Pulitzer)."

John P. Marquand (1893-1960) wrote several widely admired and bestselling novels, among them the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Late George Apley (1937). Sweeping us into the inner sanctum of Boston society, into the Beacon Hill town houses and exclusive private clubs where only the city's wealthiest and most powerful congregate, this novel gives us — through the story of one family and its patriarch, the recently deceased George Apley — the portrait of an entire society in transition. Gently satirical and rich with drama, the novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world — and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.

Indiana

3M said, "What about A Girl Named Zippy for Indiana?"

When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would run around like a circus monkey, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back in time to when small-town America was still trapped in the amber of the innocent post-war period: people help their neighbors, go to church, keep barnyard animals in their backyards.

To three-year-old Zippy, it makes perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep her baby bottle — never mind that when she does, it's the first time she's ever spoken. The words never stop once Zippy finds her voice, and it is a voice that Kimmel captures perfectly page after page. In her nonplussed family, Zippy has the ideal supporting cast: her beautiful yet dour brother, Danny, a seeker of the true faith; her sweetly sensible sister, Lindy, who wins the local beauty pageant; her mother, Delonda, who dispenses wisdom from the corner of the couch; and her father, Bob Jarvis, who never met a bet he didn't take. The world seen through Zippy's eyes is vivid and occasionally mind-boggling, especially when Zippy grapples with the meaning of time and has to go lie in a "worm hole" to recover.

Whether describing a serious case of chicken love, another episode with the evil old woman across the street, or the night Zippy's dad borrows thirty-six coon dogs and a raccoon to prove to the complaining neighbors just how quiet his two dogs are, Kimmel treats readers to a heroine as appealing, naive, and knowing as Scout Finch as she navigates the quirky adult world surrounding Zippy.

Update, still need 13 states

We have at least one book for 37 states, but we are missing any mention (so far) of 13 states:

Connecticut
Delaware
Illinois
Indiana
Massachusetts
New Jersey
North Dakota
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Dakota
Utah
Virginia
Wisconsin

Even states we have mentioned may need more suggestions. Many have only one book mentioned so far, which means we may not have found the BEST of the bunch.

Idaho

... is only part of one book, not really a whole book about the state. Do you know of any others? Please keep those suggestions coming in ... and thanks to everyone who has suggested a book or books.

Now, take a look at our UPDATED "visited states" map at the bottom of this page.

Kansas

Framed said, "Lynne @ http://lynneslittlecorner.blogspot.com/ added The Wizard of Oz for Kansas."

Hailed as the first original American fairy tale, The Wizard of Oz inspired countless sequels and imitations, as well as the classic American musical film and the Broadway musical The Wiz. In L. Frank Baum's imaginative story, Dorothy Gale takes a magical journey from the American heartland into the wonderful land of Oz to meet the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.

Ohio

Framed said, "Lynne @ http://lynneslittlecorner.blogspot.com/ added "And the Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer for Ohio. Ladies is a great book but big. It's an epic starting in the late 1800's, I think."

"...And Ladies of the Club" centers on the members of a book club and their struggles to understand themselves, each other, and the tumultuous world they live in.

Yikes! Yes, it IS long ... at 1184 pages! I think the author sounds interesting: "Helen Hooven Santmyer was born in 1895 and lived in Xenia, Ohio. In addition to her career as a writer, she worked as an English professor, a dean of women, and a librarian." But I wish the publisher had told me more about the book. A reviewer named Stan (a man, no less) had this to say: "The book is the story of a fictional medium-sized town in southern Ohio, from just after the Civil War to the beginning of the Depression. The story is told primarily through the eyes of a women's book club, and focuses particularly on two of the club's members and their families. All the important themes of life are explored: love, race, jealousy, religion, war, politics, business, literature, education, family relationships, and death. If you read this book, you will be both moved to tears and richly educated in American history. How much more can you ask of one book?"

Wyoming

Framed said, "Candleman @ http://www.carpecrustulum.blogspot.com/ suggested An Unfinished Life for Wyoming. Don't know the author."

In an extraordinary tale of love and forgiveness, Mark Spragg brings us this novel of a complex, prodigal homecoming. After escaping the last of a long string of abusive boyfriends, Jean Gilkyson and her ten-year-old daughter Griff have nowhere left to go. Nowhere except Ishawooa, Wyoming, where Jean's estranged father-in-law, Einar, still blames her for the death of his son. Though Einar isn’t glad to see either of them, Griff falls in love with his sprawling ranch and quiet way of life, as she slowly gets to know his crippled old friend Mitch, the cats that lurk in the barn at milking time, and finally the grandfather she had lost for so many years. An emotionally charged story of hard-won friendship and reconciliation, An Unfinished Life shows a novelist of extraordinary talents in the fullness of his powers.

Framed continued, "That suggestion led me to Where Rivers Change Directions by Mark Spragg and Fencing the Sky by James Galvin also for Wyoming."

Where Rivers Change Direction: A Memoir by Mark Spragg is a collection of essays telling an unforgettable story of an adolescence spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming, a remote spread on the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. On the occasion of buying his first horse, Spragg earns a rare day-off from work and spends it at a stock auction with his father, a man whose love, though earned, remains ineffable. A life-threatening accident on an elk hunt in a remote wilderness area becomes a reflection upon the depth and nature of the bond between a young man and his mentor. A boy's desire to fire a gun is cause for questioning rites of passage that wed manhood and violence. A mortally injured wild horse and a mysterious, reclusive neighbor haunt the winter Spragg spends as a caretaker at a snow-bound ranch where the dance between life and death, sanity and insanity, is inescapable. Where Rivers Change Direction illuminates the unexpected wisdom and irrevocable truth embedded in the small but profound dramas of one boy's journey toward manhood. From a wild and unforgiving setting emerges an individual of extraordinary fortitude, humility, and understanding.

Fencing the Sky by James Galvin reveals how passion can send circumstances spiraling out of control: the inevitable clash when people believe the land they love is threatened. Galloping through the lush, beaver-worked draw looking for stray cows, Mike Arans never imagined that he was about to kill a man by swinging a nylon lasso around his neck. Once the man was dead, Mike pulled a notepad and pencil stub from his pocket and wrote, "I did this." He signed the note and stuffed it into the dead man's breast pocket. Mike then returned home, stocked up on supplies, and within minutes was heading west. Thus begins what turns out to be a dramatic escape into the rugged wilderness of northern Colorado and Wyoming. The novel's deeper story, however, goes back many years and confronts the issues that divide contemporary westerners. At its center are Ad, Oscar, and Mike, whose lives turn with the seasons and the rigors of ranch life, mountain-hardened men who do not possess but are themselves possessed by the land.

Maine

3M said, "I've also heard that A Country of Pointed Firs by Jewett is good for Maine." (Yikes! Michelle suggested this ten days ago! I never got it posted and just ran across it again. Please help me, everyone. If you notice I failed to post a suggested book, or forgot to put a title in the sidebar list, or whatever ... please let me know!)

Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs was published in 1896, and it quickly garnered a reputation for its truthfulness and the quality of its writing. Rudyard Kipling described it as "immense -- it is the very life," and Henry James praised it for being "absolutely true -- not a word overdone -- such elegance and exactness." It's a classic of American fiction, memorializing the traditions, manners and dialect of Maine coast natives at the turn of the 20th century. In luminous evocations of their lives, Maine-born Jewett created startlingly real portraits of individual New Englanders, and a warm, humorous and compassionate vision of New England character.

Though nominally a novel, The Country of the Pointed Firs lacks the coherent, unifying plot of more traditional books. Instead, Jewett creates a mosaic of tales and character sketches, all set in the fictional Maine fishing hamlet of Dunnet Landing. The unnamed narrator, an unmarried female writer (like Jewett herself), has come to the town seeking a summer of solitude and work. But she’s drawn to the villagers she meets. Most of them are over sixty, alone, and covering a roiling inner ocean of feeling with a craggy exterior as rocky as the ragged coastline. Entranced by their stories, she allows them to enter her life.

New York

Bonnie said, "Forever by Pete Hamill is a book about New York that will require a suspension of disbelief, but I really enjoyed the book."

Forever by Pete Hamill is the magical, epic tale of an extraordinary man who arrives in New York in 1740 and remains. . . forever. Through the eyes of young Cormac O'Connor—granted immortality as long as he never leaves the island of Manhattan—we watch New York grow from a tiny settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the thriving metropolis of today. And through Cormac's remarkable adventures in both love and war, we come to know all the city's buried secrets—the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and, above all, by hope.

Kentucky

3M said, "I noticed you don't have any books for Kentucky. I just moved from there and would like to suggest books by Wendell Berry and Silas House. Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, and Nathan Coulter are some from Berry. Silas House has these three books in chronological order (nor order of publication): Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo, and Clay's Quilt."



Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Returning once again to the Port William membership, Berry has written his best novel yet, a book certain to confirm his reputation as one of America's finest novelists. From the simple setting of his own barber shop, Jayber Crow, orphan, seminarian, and native of Port William, recalls his life and the life of his community as it spends itself in the middle of the twentieth century. Surrounded by his friends and neighbors, he is both participant and witness as the community attempts to transcend its own decline. And meanwhile Jayber learns the art of devotion and that a faithful love is its own reward.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry. "Ignorant boys, killing each other," is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife about the Battle of Okinawa in November 1945. Life continued as some boys returned from the war while the lives of others were mourned. Nathan's wife, Hannah, has time now to tell of the years since the war. In her eighties, twice widowed and alone, Hannah shares her memories: of her childhood, of young love and loss, of raising children and the changing seasons. She turns her plain gaze to a community facing its own deterioration, where, she says, "We feel the old fabric torn, pulling apart, and we know how much we have loved each other." Hannah offers her summation: her stories and her gratitude for membership in Port William. We see her whole life as part of the great continuum of love and memory, grief and strength. Hannah Coulter is the latest installment in Wendell Berry's long story about the citizens of Port William, Kentucky. In his unforgettable prose, we learn of the Coulters' children, of the Feltners and Branches, and how survivors "live right on."

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry. "Young Nathan struggles to grow up and understand the value of land and family. With the death of his grandfather, Nathan sees that "his life couldn't be divided from the days he'd spent at work in his fields."



Parchment of Leaves by Silas House. "So it is that Vine, Cherokee-born and raised in the early 1900s, trains her eye on a young white man, forsaking her family and their homeland to settle in with Saul's people: his smart-as-a-whip, slow-to-love mother, Esme; his brother Aaron, a gifted banjo player, hot tempered and unpredictable; and Aaron's flightly and chattery Melungeon wife, Aidia." It's a delicate negotiation into this new family and culture, one that Vine's mother had predicted would not go smoothly. But it's worse than she could have imagined. Vine is viewed as an outsider by the townspeople. Aaron, she slowly realizes, is strangely fixated on her. But what is at first difficult becomes a test of her spirit. And in the violent turn of events that ensues, she learns what it means to forgive others and, most important, how to forgive herself.

The Coal Tattoo by Silas House tells the story of Easter and Anneth, tragically left parentles as children, who must raise themselves and each other in their small coal-mining town. Easter is deeply religious, keeps a good home, believes in tradition, and is intent on rearing her wild younger sister properly. Anneth is untamable, full of passion, determined to live hard and fast. The two sisters can't stand to live together, but can't bear to be apart.

Clay's Quilt by Silas House. On a bone-chilling New Year's Day, when all the mountain roads are slick with ice, Clay's mother, Anneth, insists on leaving her husband. She packs her things, and with three-year-old Clay in tow, they inch their way toward her hometown along the treacherous mountain roads. That journey ends in the death of Clay's mother. It's a day that comes to haunt her only son, who's left without a family and a history. This is the story of how Clay Sizemore, a coal miner in love with his town but unsure of his place within it, finds a family to call his own.

Oregon

Bonnie said, "I found this one because it's listed on 3M's Pulitzer Project, to read all 81 books that have ever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Although I never got it read, a friend recommended this book to me as a good one about Oregon."

Honey in the Horn is the first novel by Harold Lenoir Davis. It is set in turn-of-the-century Oregon ... and that would be the turn of the LAST century. The novel received the Harper's Prize for fiction the year it was published (1935) and the Pulitzer Prize in 1936. Here's how the book begins:

"There was a run-down old tollbridge station in the Shoestring Valley of Southern Oregon where Uncle Preston Shiveley had lived for fifty years, outlasting a wife, two sons, several plagues of grasshoppers, wheat-rust and caterpillars, a couple or three invasions of land-hunting settlers and real-estate speculators, and everybody else except the scattering of old pioneers who had cockleburred themselves onto the country at about the same time he did."

One reviewer called it "a rollicking good story."

Nebraska

Bonnie said, "I heartily recommend One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. The setting is Nebraska Territory, on the Great Plains of the United States. I wrote my review of the book today and rated it 9.5 out of 10. I couldn't put it down."

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd is historical fiction. Jim Fergus got the idea for this novel from an actual historical event; at a peace conference at Fort Laramie, a prominent Northern Cheyenne chief requested of the U.S. Army authorities the gift of 1,000 white women as brides for his young warriors. Because theirs is a matrilineal society in which all children born belong to their mother's tribe, this seemed to the Cheyennes to be the perfect means of assimilation into the white man's world, a world they already recognized held no place for them. Needless to say, this request was not well received by the white authorities, and nothing came of it. In the novel the women come west.

Committed to an insane asylum by her blueblood family for an affair with a man beneath her station, May Dodd finds that her only hope of freedom is to participate in a secret government program whereby women from the "civilized" world become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. Along the way she falls in love with John Bourke, a young army captain, even though she has promised to marry the great chief Little Wolf.

New Hampshire

Bonnie said, "I recommend Beachcombing For A Shipwrecked God by Joe Coomer, which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. One character leaves Kentucky after being widowed and winds up in New Hampshire living on a boat with the elderly owner and a 17-year-old girl."

Nine weeks after losing her husband, Charlotte escapes to New Hampshire, where she takes up residence on a wooden motor yacht named after Don Quixote's horse. Her landlady is an aging blue-haired trompe l'oeil artist, and her cabin mate is an overweight adolescent with an abusive boyfriend. Together these three laugh, cry, and battle injustices.

Off the boat, Charlotte, an archaeologist, joins a local excavation to uncover an ancient graveyard. Here she can indulge her passion for reconstructing the past, even as she tries to bury her own recent history. She comes to realize, however, that the currents of time are as fluid and persistent as the water that drifts beneath her comforting new home. Together the shipmates share some unforgettable adventures, including a madcap trip on the sea in search of the house of Anne of Green Gables.

Arizona

Jill said, "I just finished a collection of essays by Barbara Kingsolver called High Tide in Tucson, and this is my selection for the beautiful state of Arizona. Kingsolver chooses many settings from her essays, but her descriptions of Arizona are ecological, historical and practical. I think it gives the reader a wonderful snapshot about this state. You can read my review here."

In High Tide in Tucson Barbara Kingsolver explores the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois. In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction.

West Virginia

NOLADawn said, "West Virginia- From West Virginia with Love by Andrew Chafin."

Chafin's hobby is writing about Appalachia and its people and places. From West Virginia with Love is the sequel to Noble's Decision, a novel about life, love, and politics in a small Appalachian town. Dawn, does this book work as a stand-alone novel? Or do we first need to read Noble's Decision? Umm, never mind, I can't find thr earlier novel online, anyway. Have you read From West Virginia with Love? If so, what did you think of it?

Nevada

NOLADawn said, "Nevada- Bittersweet by Nevada Barr"

Award-winning author Nevada Barr reveals another side to her remarkable storytelling prowess with this heart-wrenching yet tender tale of two women whose boundless devotion to each other is continually challenged in nineteenth century America. One online reviewer said, "Reminds me of Fannie Flagg's [Fried Green Tomatoes at the] Whistle Stop Cafe except more intense and deeper material. I have had the book two days and read it twice because I read it too fast the first time."

Michigan

NOLADawn said, "Michigan- Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon."

Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, Morrison powerfully evokes in her fiction the legacies of displacement and slavery that have been bequeathed to the African-American community. Her most widely read novel is perhaps Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Song of Solomon, however, is perhaps the most lyrical of her novels, following Milkman Dead as he struggles to understand his family history and the ways in which that history has both been damaged by and transcended the horror of slavery.

Georgia

Jill said, "Hi, Bonnie: I have finished my Georgia selection for this challenge - a delightful book called Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. You can read my review here. I know, we need another Georgia book like a hole in the head - but this one does a good job portraying small-town Georgia life!"

The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast. When Grandpa E. Rucker Blakeslee announces one July morning in 1906 that he's aiming to marry the young and freckledy milliner, Miss Love Simpson - a bare three weeks after Granny Blakeslee has gone to her reward - the news is served up all over town with that afternoon's dinner. And young Will Tweedy suddenly finds himself eyewitness to a major scandal. Boggled by the sheer audacity of it all, and not a little jealous of his grandpa's new wife, Will nevertheless approves of this May-December match and follows its progress with just a smidgen of youthful prurience. As the newlyweds' chaperone, conspirator, and confidant, Will is privy to his one-armed, renegade grandfather's second adolescence; meanwhile, he does some growing up of his own. He gets run over by a train and lives to tell about it; he kisses his first girl, and survives that too. Olive Ann Burns has given us a timeless, funny, resplendent novel - about a romance that rocks an entire town, about a boy's passage through the momentous but elusive year when childhood melts into adolescence, and about just how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the last century.

New York

Neco recommends "The Falls, which is set on the American side of Niagara Falls. Not at all sure which state that is in. I googled the book couldn't find out readily. I'm hoping someone with a better sense of geography than me will know. LOL, this is actually the reason I didn't suggest it before. It's about a romance ended by a death on Niagara Falls back a few generations ago, which leads into the 1950s and a legal battle involving industry pollution of the area. I felt like I was learning about the history of the area, even though it's fiction."

A man climbs over the railings and plunges into Niagara Falls. A newlywed, he has left behind his wife, Ariah Erskine, in the honeymoon suite the morning after their wedding. "The Widow Bride of The Falls," as Ariah comes to be known, begins a relentless, seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side throughout, confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby is unexpectedly transfixed by the strange, otherworldly gaze of this plain, strange woman, falling in love with her though they barely exchange a word. What follows is their passionate love affair, marriage, and children -- a seemingly perfect existence.

But the tragedy by which their life together began shadows them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder. Joyce Carol Oates explores the American family in crisis, but also America itself in the mid-twentieth century.

New Hampshire

Neco said, "Anita Shreve (the novelist who wrote Fortune's Rock) lives in (or nearby) Boston and grew up in New England, I think. I have read the majority of her books, which are character driven stories that make one think about why people makes the choices they make and usually have lovely New England settings that feature into the story. I chose this particular book to recommend because not only does it have a complicated romance and complex characters, but the mill towns and factory girls of the early 1900s in New England play into the main story so I thought it shared something about the history of that area of New England. The majority of the book is set at the girl's family's summer home, which is in New Hampshire according to your post (I've read the book more than once but not recently enough to remember for sure), and also in Boston and a mill town in New England. So I'd go New Hampshire, if you use it."

In Fortune's Rocks, Shreve turns historical in venue and ultramodern in attitude. Set at the turn of the century — the 20th century, that is — the story concerns Olympia Biddleford, well-born daughter of an erudite, if rather cold father. The precocious Olympia is the kind of girl who might then have been called high-spirited: She has her own opinions about history and literature, for example, and isn't shy about expressing them — at least within the safety of her family. But Olympia is also high-spirited and provocative in other, more dangerous ways — most notably when she embarks on a sexual relationship with John Haskell, one of her father's friends (and 30 years her senior). Nothing good will come of this, Olympia and the reader both know from the outset; it doesn't take long — just about a third of the novel, in fact — for this foreboding to be proved right. The lovers are soon discovered, and their lives are torn asunder. Haskell's wife leaves him, the Biddlefords' reputation is seriously besmirched, and Olympia is sent by her omnipotent father to a school "out west."

But the story hardly ends there. Olivia, it turns out, is pregnant with Haskell's child, and though in a drugged postpartum state she allows her son to be taken from her, she soon returns to Fortune's Rocks intent on reclaiming him.

It's at this point that Shreve begins blending the novel's own particular topicality cocktail. Olympia discovers that her son is living with well-meaning but poor French immigrants, and she decides to use her not insignificant fortune and still powerful (if somewhat tarnished) reputation to prove that she, not the Telesphore Bolducs, should have custody of her boy. The problem is, even Olympia can't deny that the Bolducs are loving parents and that the child is happy and well in their care. What follows is a court case and a soul-searching that liberally borrows not only from the biblical tale of King Solomon (who is the better mother — the one who will allow her child to be figuratively cut in half or the one who allows him to live with the other?) but also from pop culture milestones such as the 1979 movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" and the Mary Beth Whitehead surrogate mother trial (remember that one?).

South Carolina

A week or so ago Neco said, "Sue Monk Kidd wrote The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid's Chair. Dorothea Benton Frank has written Sullivan's Island, Plantation, Shem Creek, The Land of Mango Sunsets, Isle of Palms, Pawley's Island, and Full of Grace. Of all the above books, I would most recommend Sullivan's Island or Plantation for strong South Carolina culture/setting fiction while still being light and easy reads and following a personal journey of the protagonist."

I suggested (and posted) the first book on each author's list, but upon further reflection I realize I probably should have posted ALL of these books. (I apologize, Neco.) So I'm doing that here.

In The Mermaid's Chair, Sue Monk Kidd tells the story of Jessie Sullivan, which is a love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul. On tiny Egret Island, off the coast of South Carolina, Jessie tries to care for her mother, Nelle, who is not particularly eager to be taken care of. Jessie gets help from Nelle's best friends: Kat, a feisty shopkeeper, and Hepzibah, a dignified chronicler of slave history. To complicate matters, Jessie finds herself strangely relieved to be free of a husband she loves ... and wildly attracted to Brother Thomas, a junior monk at the island's secluded Benedictine monastery.



In Plantation, a poignant mother-daughter story, Dorothea Benton Frank evokes a lush plantation in the heart of modern-day South Carolina, where family ties and hidden truths run as deep and dark as the mighty Edisto River.

In Shem Creek, single parent Linda Breland ditches a dead-end job and life in New Jersey to move back home to Mt. Pleasant and start a new life for herself and her teenage daughters. ("Look, if New Jersey had wanted us, it would have given us a reason to stay. It didn't.") The work she finds -- manager of a restaurant on Shem Creek -- introduces her to its owner, Brad Jackson, a man living out his own second chance.

In Land of Mango Sunsets, Frank gives us one woman's journey toward a hard-won truth, that life isn't always what it appears to be, and the sooner you realize that pride won't keep you warm at night, the happier you will be. When Miriam gets her head on straight, then in a whoosh she's off to the enchanted and mysterious land of Sullivan's Island, deep in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Publishers Weekly says, "This isn't Frank's finest, but it'll sate her fans."



Isle of Palms is set off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina. Anna Lutz Abbot thinks she has her independence, and therefore her happiness, intact. She is a capable woman, a sensible woman, not someone given to risky living. This all seems true enough until her lovely daughter returns from college for the summer a very different person, her wild and wonderful ex-husband arrives, and her flamboyant new best friend takes up with her daddy, turning a hot summer into a steaming one. All the action unfolds under the watchful eyes of Miss Mavis and Miss Angel, her next-door neighbors of a certain age, who have plenty to say about Anna's past, present, and future.

In Pawley's Island Dorothea Benton Frank delivers a refreshingly honest and funny novel about an artist who suddenly enters the complacent lives of several Lowcountry locals ... and turns them upside down. It's a twist-filled tale of friendship, family, and finding happiness by becoming who you are meant to be.

In Full of Grace, Frank gives us Hilton Head, a South Carolina retirement heaven -- at least it's supposed to be. But for Big Al and Connie Russo, the move from New Jersey to this southern paradise has been fraught with just a few complications. Especially for their daughter, Grace. Well, that's what she likes to be called. Her family insists on Maria Graziella. That might have been okay in New Jersey, but now it's just plain silly, and Grace at thirty-two is, horror of horrors, still unmarried. No wonder her family drives her crazy. Well, that and the fact that she's living with the man she would marry if they both weren't so commitment phobic. Michael is a doctor and a scientist and Grace is pretty sure he's also an atheist. Over the years, Grace has become a bit ambivalent about her faith, but her family is as old-fashioned Italian as they come.

Maine

Bonnie said, "More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon, which is set in Maine, was recommended to me by a friend. I bought a copy of the book a few years ago and have never read it. My friend was impressed by the book, and we don't yet have one for the state of Maine, so here's one suggestion. Has anyone read it yet?"

More Than You Know is a haunting novel that bridges two centuries, two mother-daughter relationships, and two tragic love stories. In a small town called Dundee on the coast of Maine, an old woman named Hannah Gray begins her story by saying, "Somebody said 'true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, and few have seen.' I've seen both, and I don't know how to tell you which is worse." Hannah has a passionate and painful story of true love and loss: the story of a ghost that appeared in her life, and in the life of Conary Crocker, the wild and appealing boy who loved her.

Interwoven with their love story is a story of a marriage that took place in Dundee a hundred years earlier. As the parallels and differences between the two families are revealed, the reader comes to understand that someone in the nineteenth-century story has become the very unquiet soul haunting the twentieth. But not until the end do we learn (as Hannah never can) what force of mischance and personality has led to so much damage, and no one knows if such damage is ever at an end.
____________________
Update on August 26, 2007: Yes! Here's a review by Framed on her blog.
Update on September 15, 2007: Here's a review by Bonnie on her book blog.