Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the 1980s in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home and find themselves exchanging confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. Evelyn is middle-aged and falling apart, while Cleo, at age 86, cherishes memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, the tiny town which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its single cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits and fried green tomatoes to anyone who passed by. Their love for each other (and just about everyone else) survived the Depression, visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, and a murder.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Alabama
For Alabama, Bonnie suggests the fun-filled Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. The little town is located just outside Birmingham, Alabama.
Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the 1980s in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home and find themselves exchanging confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. Evelyn is middle-aged and falling apart, while Cleo, at age 86, cherishes memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, the tiny town which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its single cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits and fried green tomatoes to anyone who passed by. Their love for each other (and just about everyone else) survived the Depression, visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, and a murder.
Cleo Threadgood and Evelyn Couch meet in the 1980s in the visitors lounge of an Alabama nursing home and find themselves exchanging confidences that are sometimes only safe to reveal to strangers. Evelyn is middle-aged and falling apart, while Cleo, at age 86, cherishes memories of a lifetime spent in Whistle Stop, the tiny town which flourished in the days of the Great Depression. Most of the town's life centered around its single cafe, whose owners, gentle Ruth and tomboyish Idgie, served up grits and fried green tomatoes to anyone who passed by. Their love for each other (and just about everyone else) survived the Depression, visits from the sheriff, the Ku Klux Klan, a host of hungry hoboes, and a murder.
Louisiana
NOLADawn has a couple of suggestions: "For Louisiana how about No Place, Louisiana by Martin Pousson, or you could always go the traditional route and do Tennesee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire."
Let's put them both up for consideration.
In No Place, Louisiana, Nita is sixteen, working in a diner, putting up with the coarse advances of her stepfather, and living on the edge of Jennings, Louisiana, when her brother sets her up on a blind date with Louis Toussaint. He is rude and cheap, Nita thinks, not exactly what she has in mind. But when he offers an engagement ring, Nita accepts what she believes is her ticket out of the place, the life she already feels is stifling her. She deserves better, and Louis can give it to her, if only he will work hard enough.
NOLADawn's review of No Place, Louisiana.
Streetcar Named Desire is the story of Blanche DuBois, fading and desperate, and how her sensuous and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, pushes her over the edge. One online reviewer says no one can be considered well-read without having read this classic.
Let's put them both up for consideration.
In No Place, Louisiana, Nita is sixteen, working in a diner, putting up with the coarse advances of her stepfather, and living on the edge of Jennings, Louisiana, when her brother sets her up on a blind date with Louis Toussaint. He is rude and cheap, Nita thinks, not exactly what she has in mind. But when he offers an engagement ring, Nita accepts what she believes is her ticket out of the place, the life she already feels is stifling her. She deserves better, and Louis can give it to her, if only he will work hard enough.
NOLADawn's review of No Place, Louisiana.Streetcar Named Desire is the story of Blanche DuBois, fading and desperate, and how her sensuous and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, pushes her over the edge. One online reviewer says no one can be considered well-read without having read this classic.
North Carolina
Jill has added another state: "Twist my arm, twist my arm...okay, another idea from my blog. The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks for his beautiful NC imagery, nature and ecology."In 1932, two North Carolina teenagers from opposite sides of the tracks fall in love. After spending one idyllic summer together in the small town of New Bern, Noah Calhoun and Allie Nelson do not meet again for 14 years. Noah has returned from WW2 to restore the house of his dreams, having inherited a large sum of money. Allie, programmed by family and the "caste system of the South" to marry an ambitious, prosperous man, has become engaged to powerful attorney Lon Hammond. When she reads a newspaper story about Noah's restoration project, she shows up on his porch step, re-entering his life for two days. Will Allie leave Lon for Noah?
Arkansas
Mercy's Maid said, "What about Summer of My German Soldier for Arkansas?"
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene is about a Jewish girl and a German soldier in Arkansas during World War Two. Minutes before the train pulled into the station in Jenkinsville, Arkansas, Patty Bergen knew something exciting was going to happen. But she never could have imagined that her summer would be so memorable. German prisoners of war have arrived to make their new home in the prison camp in Jenkinsville. To the rest of her town, these prisoners are only Nazis. But to Patty, a young Jewish girl with a turbulent home life, one boy in particular becomes an unlikely friend. Anton relates to Patty in ways that her mother and father never can. But when their forbidden relationship is discovered, will Patty risk her family and town for the understanding and love of one boy?
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene is about a Jewish girl and a German soldier in Arkansas during World War Two. Minutes before the train pulled into the station in Jenkinsville, Arkansas, Patty Bergen knew something exciting was going to happen. But she never could have imagined that her summer would be so memorable. German prisoners of war have arrived to make their new home in the prison camp in Jenkinsville. To the rest of her town, these prisoners are only Nazis. But to Patty, a young Jewish girl with a turbulent home life, one boy in particular becomes an unlikely friend. Anton relates to Patty in ways that her mother and father never can. But when their forbidden relationship is discovered, will Patty risk her family and town for the understanding and love of one boy?
Hawaii, Texas, Colorado, Maryland, Alaska
Framed has suggested books for five states: "James Michener has written several books about different states that start at the beginning of time: Hawaii, Texas, Centennial (Colorado), Chesapeake (Maryland), and Alaska. I enjoyed Hawaii and Centennial the most, but they are really big books."
Maryland 
Colorado
All of Michener's books are big books! Good suggestions, thanks.
Maryland 
ColoradoAll of Michener's books are big books! Good suggestions, thanks.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Iowa
Bonnie suggests two possibilities for Iowa: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Smiley's novel of family life on an Iowa farm is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, about a father and his three daughters. When Larry Cook, the aging patriarch of a rich, thriving farm in Iowa, decides to retire, he offers his land to his daughters. For Ginny and Rose, who live on the farm with their husbands, the gift makes sense — a reward for years of hard work, a challenge to make the farm even more successful. But the youngest, Caroline, a Des Moines lawyer, flatly rejects the idea, and in anger her father cuts her out — setting off an explosive series of events that will leave none of them unchanged. A classic story of contemporary American life, A Thousand Acres strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a father, a daughter, a family.
In 1956, toward the end of the Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition. Ames's grandfather "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father -- an ardent pacifist -- and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. Gilead won both the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
__________
Sept. 21, 2007 ~ Jill has a review of this book on her blog.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Smiley's novel of family life on an Iowa farm is a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, about a father and his three daughters. When Larry Cook, the aging patriarch of a rich, thriving farm in Iowa, decides to retire, he offers his land to his daughters. For Ginny and Rose, who live on the farm with their husbands, the gift makes sense — a reward for years of hard work, a challenge to make the farm even more successful. But the youngest, Caroline, a Des Moines lawyer, flatly rejects the idea, and in anger her father cuts her out — setting off an explosive series of events that will leave none of them unchanged. A classic story of contemporary American life, A Thousand Acres strikes at the very heart of what it means to be a father, a daughter, a family.
In 1956, toward the end of the Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition. Ames's grandfather "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father -- an ardent pacifist -- and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son. Gilead won both the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.__________
Sept. 21, 2007 ~ Jill has a review of this book on her blog.
Tennessee
Jill has another suggestion for Tennessee: "My favorite story about Tennessee is Widow of the South by Robert Hicks - a fictional account of the Battle of Franklin and the McGavock Plantation."
Five of the bloddiest hours of the Civil War occurred in 1864 during the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Carrie McGavock's farmhouse was commandeered as a Confederate field hospital, four generals lay dead on her back porch, and the pile of amputated limbs rose as tall as the smoke house. There were 9,200 casualties that fateful day. Because McGavock spent the rest of her life mourning those lost, eventually reburying nearly 1,500 of them on her property, she became known as "the widow of the South." Robert Hicks's first historical novel captures the life-altering force that war exerts even on noncombatants.
Jill, this book is certainly more readable that the one I suggested, Summons to Memphis. Good call.
Five of the bloddiest hours of the Civil War occurred in 1864 during the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Carrie McGavock's farmhouse was commandeered as a Confederate field hospital, four generals lay dead on her back porch, and the pile of amputated limbs rose as tall as the smoke house. There were 9,200 casualties that fateful day. Because McGavock spent the rest of her life mourning those lost, eventually reburying nearly 1,500 of them on her property, she became known as "the widow of the South." Robert Hicks's first historical novel captures the life-altering force that war exerts even on noncombatants.Jill, this book is certainly more readable that the one I suggested, Summons to Memphis. Good call.
Georgia
Jill also suggests: "For Georgia, I would recommend Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in addition to the aforementioned GWTW." Here's Jill's review of the book.
This book of nonfiction by John Berendt, set in steamy Savannah, is written like a novel. The eccentric characters include society ladies, a redneck gigolo, a recluse, a profane Southern belle, a black drag queen, an antiques dealer, a piano-playing con artist, young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball, and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight.
This book of nonfiction by John Berendt, set in steamy Savannah, is written like a novel. The eccentric characters include society ladies, a redneck gigolo, a recluse, a profane Southern belle, a black drag queen, an antiques dealer, a piano-playing con artist, young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball, and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight.
Florida
Jill has several suggestions, starting with these: "My home state is Florida, and I would recommnd Marjorie Rawlings, such as her The Yearling or Cross Creek." Here's Jill's review of the book.
An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize winner has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In this classic story of the Baxter family and their wild, hard, and satisfying life in remote central Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has written one of the great novels of our times. A rich and varied tale -- tender in its understanding of boyhood, crowded with the excitement of the backwoods hunt, with vivid descriptions of the primitive, beautiful hammock country, written with humor and earthy philosophy -- The Yearling is a novel for readers of all ages. Its glowing picture of a life refreshingly removed from modern patterns of living is universal in its revelation of simple courageous people and the beliefs they must live by.
Originally published in 1942, Cross Creek has become a classic in modern American literature. For the millions of readers raised on The Yearling, here is the story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's experiences in the remote Florida hamlet of Cross Creek, where she lived for thirteen years. From the daily labors of managing a seventy-two-acre orange grove to bouts with runaway pigs and a succession of unruly farmhands, Rawlings describes her life at the Creek with humor and spirit. Her tireless determination to overcome the challenges of her adopted home in the Florida backcountry, her deep-rooted love of the earth, and her genius for character and description result in a most delightful and heartwarming memoir.
An instant bestseller when it was released in 1938, this Pulitzer Prize winner has been read and loved by school-age children across the nation for more than fifty years. In this classic story of the Baxter family and their wild, hard, and satisfying life in remote central Florida, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings has written one of the great novels of our times. A rich and varied tale -- tender in its understanding of boyhood, crowded with the excitement of the backwoods hunt, with vivid descriptions of the primitive, beautiful hammock country, written with humor and earthy philosophy -- The Yearling is a novel for readers of all ages. Its glowing picture of a life refreshingly removed from modern patterns of living is universal in its revelation of simple courageous people and the beliefs they must live by.
Originally published in 1942, Cross Creek has become a classic in modern American literature. For the millions of readers raised on The Yearling, here is the story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's experiences in the remote Florida hamlet of Cross Creek, where she lived for thirteen years. From the daily labors of managing a seventy-two-acre orange grove to bouts with runaway pigs and a succession of unruly farmhands, Rawlings describes her life at the Creek with humor and spirit. Her tireless determination to overcome the challenges of her adopted home in the Florida backcountry, her deep-rooted love of the earth, and her genius for character and description result in a most delightful and heartwarming memoir.
Friday, July 13, 2007
North Carolina
Pour of Tor said, "Here's a possibility for NC - Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, which is considered by some to be the quintessential North Carolinian novel, and by others to be tedious and/or outrageous."Thomas Wolfe's classic coming-of-age novel, first published in 1929, is a work of epic grandeur, evoking a time and place with extraordinary lyricism and precision. Set in Altamont, North Carolina, this semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a restless young man who longs to escape his tumultuous family and his small town existence. Good choice.
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