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?
Monday, July 30, 2007
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?
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."
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.
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.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
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.
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.
Friday, July 27, 2007
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.
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?).
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?).
Thursday, July 26, 2007
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
California
Bonnie said, "Place Last Seen by Charlotte McGuinn Freeman is a novel set in the Sierra Nevada range in California. I wrote a book review about it this morning which you may want to read."
During an idyllic autumn-day hike in the Desolation Wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas, the Baker family is hurled into a nightmare when six-year-old Maggie, a child with Down Syndrome, runs away while playing hide-and-seek with her brother. As the Search and Rescue team combs the place where Maggie was last seen, all the family can do is wait and hope that a clue will lead them to her. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of the search and rescue team members, mapping quadrants, sending out tracker dogs, trying to imagine what a little girl might do when she doesn't think like most children in the first place.
During an idyllic autumn-day hike in the Desolation Wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas, the Baker family is hurled into a nightmare when six-year-old Maggie, a child with Down Syndrome, runs away while playing hide-and-seek with her brother. As the Search and Rescue team combs the place where Maggie was last seen, all the family can do is wait and hope that a clue will lead them to her. Much of the story is seen through the eyes of the search and rescue team members, mapping quadrants, sending out tracker dogs, trying to imagine what a little girl might do when she doesn't think like most children in the first place.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Book around the World?
This idea to Book around the States is working so well, I thought I'd like to add another aspect to it and Book around the World. I've started a companion blog to this one, where we'll look for books that take place in countries around the world. Only the best, of course, as we are looking for here. Go check it out and see the first book suggestion, a book I recommend. Click on the title of the blog: Book around the World
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
