Ohio

Teddy Rose chose Sula by Toni Morrison for her Ohio read.

At its center Sula is about a friendship between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel — both black, both smart, both poor, raised in a small Ohio town — meet when they are twelve, wishbone thin, and dreaming of princes. Through their girlhood years they share everything — perceptions, judgments, yearnings, secrets, even crime — until Sula gets out, out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where beneath the sporting life of the men hanging around the place in headrags and soft felt hats there hides a fierce resentment at failed crops, lost jobs, thieving insurance men, bug-ridden flour.

Sula leaps an invisible line and roams the cities of America for ten years. Then she returns to the town, to her friend. But Nel is a wife now, settled with her man and her three children. She belongs. She accommodates to the Bottom, where you avoid the hand of God by getting in it, by staying upright, helping out at church suppers, asking after folks — where you deal with evil by surviving it. Not Sula. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, she can never accommodate. Nel can't understand her any more, and the others never did. Sula scares them. Mention her now, and they recall that she put her grandma in an old folks' home (the old lady who let a train take her leg for the insurance. Toni Morrison evokes not only a bond between two lives, but the harsh, loveless, ultimately mad world in which that bond is destroyed, the world of the Bottom and its people, through forty years, up to the time of their bewildered realization that even more than they feared Sula, their pariah, they needed her.

Mississippi

Jill said, "Hi, Bonnie! I just finished The Year of Jubilo by Howard Bahr, which was set in Mississippi in 1865. A wonderful peek into post-Civil War Mississippi. Here is my review." Now my apology ... Jill told me about this book in November, and I just discovered it, lost as a draft among these posts. Mea culpa!

On a spring day in 1865 Gawain Harper trudges toward his home in Cumberland, Mississippi, where three years earlier he had boarded a train carrying the latest enlistees in the Mississippi Infantry. Unmoved by the cause that motivated so many others, he had joined up only when Morgan Rhea's father told Gawain that he would never wed his beloved Morgan unless he did his part in the war effort. Upon his return, he discovers post-war life is far from what he expected. Morgan has indeed waited for him, but before they can marry there are scores to be settled.

North Dakota

GretchenA said, "I don't see a recommendation for North Dakota yet. ... Not sure this is really a recommendation, but certainly it counts from location standpoint: The Endless Sky, by Kathryn Davis. Here's the link to my review."

Gretchen mentions three surprises:
(1) Endless Sky by Kathryn Lynn Davis is a romance novel, set in the Badlands of North Dakota. It's a western in that there's a subplot involving a half-breed Indian and there are plenty of scenes involving gunslingers, fires, and roping cattle, but it is also definitely a romance.

(2) It's based on truth, as there actually is a town of Medora, North Dakota. Here's a link to the historic city of Medora.

(3) It's a Banned Book. Gretchen said, "Truthfully, I fell off my chair at this one. Apparently when these two books were published [this book follows another], the town of Medora was celebrating its centennial. The publisher reached out and suggested that they factor the books into the celebration. That suited the town fathers fine until they realized that the books didn't make the Marquis into a saint. He was French, rich, and an explorer (all true) and yet the people of Medora were shocked that the Marquis could have been unfaithful to his wife. So they cancelled the celebration and banned the book from their library, thus ensuring that this little romance novel would automatically become a best seller."
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Bonnie's NOTE: If any of you read this, let me know and we'll post your review on my Banned Books blog. Gretchen, would you be willing to cross-post your review to the Banned Books site? It's an excellent review.

New York

Teddy Rose said, "Here are two books I came up with to cover two states and my reviews of them: NY = NEW YORK: The Crazyladies of Pearl Street by Trevanian."

The place is Albany, New York. The year is 1936. Six-year-old Jean-Luc LaPointe, his little sister, and their spirited but vulnerable young mother have been abandoned — again — by his father, a charmer and a con artist. With no money and no family willing to take them in, the LaPointes manage to create a fragile nest at 238 North Pearl Street. For the next eight years, through the Great Depression and Second World War, they live in the heart of the Irish slum, with its ward heelers, unemployment, and grinding poverty. As Jean-Luc discovers, it's a neighborhood of "crazyladies": Miss Cox, the feared and ridiculed teacher who ignites his imagination; Mrs. Kane, who runs a beauty parlor/fortune-telling salon in the back of her husband's grocery store; Mrs. Meehan, the desperate, harried matriarch of a thuggish family across the street; lonely Mrs. McGivney, who spends every day tending to her catatonic husband, a veteran of the Great War; and Jean-Luc's own unconventional, vivacious mother.

Jean-Luc is a voracious reader who never stops dreaming of a way out of the slum. He gradually takes on responsibility for the family's survival with a mix of bravery and resentment while his mom turns from spells of illness and depression to eager planning for the day when "our ship will come in." It's a heartfelt and unforgettable look back at one child's life in the 1930s and '40s, a story that will be remembered long after the last page is turned.

Iowa

Teddy Rose said, "Here are two books I came up with to cover two states and my reviews of them: IA = IOWA: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson."

Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century — 1951 — in the middle of the United States — Des Moines, Iowa — in the middle of the largest generation in American history — the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, he is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24-carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) — in his head — as "The Thunderbolt Kid."

Using this persona as a springboard, Bill Bryson re-creates the life of his family and his native city in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality — a life at once completely familiar to us all and as far away and unreachable as another galaxy. It was, he reminds us, a happy time, when automobiles and televisions and appliances (not to mention nuclear weapons) grew larger and more numerous with each passing year, and DDT, cigarettes, and the fallout from atmospheric testing were considered harmless or even good for you. He brings us into the life of his loving but eccentric family, including affectionate portraits of his father, a gifted sportswriter for the local paper and dedicated practitioner of isometric exercises, and OF his mother,whose job as the home furnishing editor for the same paper left her little time for practicing the domestic arts at home.

Maryland

Jill said, "I finished my Maryland read. It was a book called Two Brothers - One North, One South by David H. Jones. This book detailed Maryland's contribution, both Union and Confederate, to the American Civil War. Here is my review."

Walt Whitman feared that the real war would never get in the books: the true stories that depicted the courage and humanity of soldiers who fought, bled, and died in the American Civil War. Exceptionally researched and keenly accurate to actual events, along with the personages that forged them, David H. Jones's novel spans four years in the midst of America s costliest and most commemorated war. The journey is navigated by the poet, Walt Whitman, whose documented compassion for the wounded and dying soldiers of the war takes him to Armory Square Hospital in Washington, D.C., and finds him at the bedside of William Prentiss, a Rebel soldier, just after fighting has ended. As fate has it, William's brother, Clifton, a Union officer, is being treated in another ward of the same hospital, and Whitman becomes the sole link not just between the two, but with the rest of their family as well.

The reader is taken seamlessly from Medfield Academy in Baltimore, where the Prentiss family makes its home, to the many battlefields where North and South collide, and even through the drawing rooms of wartime Richmond, where Hetty, Jenny, and Constance Cary are the reigning belles.

David H. Jones, author of this book, was born and raised in West Virginia. He has been a lifelong student of the Civil War. His research took him into the swamps of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, to rediscover the lost location where a pivotal event in the book took place.

Bonnie adds: "Two Brothers: One North, One South by David H. Jones won't be published until February, so you must have an advance reading copy, Jill, right? This synopsis has me interested already ... because my grandmother was born in Dinwiddie County, Virginia."

Alaska

Sharon said, "Alaska ... I'd like to suggest books by the author Sue Henry for a read from Alaska. They are mysteries about the musher Jessie Arnold." Bonnie added, "Sharon has chosen to read Deadfall by Sue Henry, so let's take a look at that one."

Iditarod musher Jessie Arnold is being stalked and terrorized by an anonymous enemy. First, one of her sled dogs is badly injured in a steel trap and an ominous note leaves no doubt that the trap was set with malicious intent. Threatening phone calls and unsigned messages follow -- pressing Alaska State Trooper Alex Jensen to urge Jessie to go into hiding while he tries to track down the source of the threats. Finally, a near fatal car crash convinces Jessie to let Alex fly her to an isolated island more than two hundred miles away.

There on desolate, windswept Kachemak Bay, Jessie hikes the island trails with her lead dog Tank, marveling at the splendor of her solitude. But in a wilderness filled with hazards and hiding places, she soon discovers she is not alone. With Alex searching for a madman hundreds of miles away, Jessie is on her own ... playing a deadly game of hide and seek with a killer.

North Carolina

Jill said, "I just finished my official NC book for this challenge: On Agate Hill by Lee Smith (review). It was a wonderful look into North Carolina's history from the plantation life after the Civil War and mountain life around the turn of the century.

A dusty box discovered in the wreckage of a once prosperous plantation on Agate Hill in Nnorth Carolina contains the remnants of an extraordinary life: diaries, letters, poems, songs, newspaper clippings, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones. It's through these treasured mementos that we meet Molly Petree. Raised in those ruins and orphaned by the Civil War, Molly is a refugee who has no interest in self-pity. When a mysterious benefactor appears out her father's past to rescue her, she never looks back. Spanning half a century, On Agate Hill follows Molly’s passionate, picaresque journey through love, betrayal, motherhood, a murder trial—and back home to Agate Hill under circumstances she never could have imagined.

To read an excerpt, click here.

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.