Texas

Jill said, "My Texas book is The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block (review). This was a GREAT book - highly recommended."

In Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting, three narratives intertwine to create a story that is by turns funny, smart, introspective, and revelatory. Abel Haggard is an elderly hunchback who haunts the remnants of his family’s farm in the encroaching shadow of the Dallas suburbs, adrift in recollections of those he loved and lost long ago. As a young man, he believed himself to be “the one person too many”; now he is all that remains. Hundreds of miles to the south, in Austin, Seth Waller is a teenage “Master of Nothingness” –- a prime specimen of that gangly, pimple-rashed, too-smart breed of adolescent that vanishes in a puff of sarcasm at the slightest threat of human contact. When his mother is diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Seth sets out on a quest to find her lost relatives and to conduct an “empirical investigation” that will uncover the truth of her genetic history. Though neither knows of the other’s existence, Abel and Seth are linked by a dual legacy: the disease that destroys the memories of those they love, and the story of a mythical place called Isidora, a fantasy world free from the sorrows of remembrance, a land without memory where nothing is ever possessed, so nothing can be lost.

South Carolina

Jill said, "I would like to add the soon-to-be-released Dorothea Benton Frank book to the SC list. It's called Bulls Island and will be in book stores in May 2008. While not my style of fiction, I did enjoy Frank's depictions of South Carolina. Here is my review."

(Since Jill doesn't really care much for this book, I think we have a problem. Are we trying to find all the books we can about a state? Or do we want to find only the BEST books about each state? More on this problem coming up.)

"Will romance triumph over the feud between the aristocratic Langleys and the slightly lower-in-social-pecking-order McGees in Frank's latest Southern charm-filled romp?" asked PW. After twenty years Betts, a top investment bank executive, must leave her comfortable life in New York City to return to the home she thought she'd left behind forever. But spearheading the most important project of her career puts her back in contact with everything she's tried so hard to forget: her estranged sister, her father, her former fiancee J. D. Langley, and her past. Once she's home, can Betts keep the secret that threatens all she holds dear? Or will her fear of the past wreck her future happiness?

Michigan

Sharon said, "For Michigan I would like to suggest A Superior Death by Nevada Barr, one of my favorite authors."

Park ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the northern Midwest. But when a routine application for a diving permit reveals a grisly underwater murder, Anna finds herself 260 feet below the forbidding surface of the lake, searching for the connection between a drowned man and an age-old cargo ship. Written with a naturalist's feel for the wilderness and a keen understanding of characters who thrive in extreme conditions, A Superior Death is a passionate, atmospheric page-turner.

Hawaii

Sharon said, "Hello, I have a couple of suggestions for Hawaii. The first one, Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, is on my list to be read. The second one is Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Lee Goldberg. Hope this is helpful."

Young Rachel Kalama, growing up in idyllic Honolulu in the 1890s, is part of a big, loving Hawaiian family, and dreams of seeing the far-off lands that her father, a merchant seaman, often visits. But at the age of seven, Rachel and her dreams are shattered by the discovery that she has leprosy. Forcibly removed from her family, she is sent to Kalaupapa, the isolated leper colony on the island of Moloka'i. In her exile she finds a family of friends to replace the family she's lost: a native healer, Haleola, who becomes her adopted "auntie" and makes Rachel aware of the rich culture and mythology of her people; Sister Mary Catherine Voorhies, one of the Franciscan sisters who care for young girls at Kalaupapa; and the beautiful, worldly Leilani, who harbors a surprising secret. At Kalaupapa she also meets the man she will one day marry. True to historical accounts, Moloka'i is the story of an extraordinary human drama, the full scope and pathos of which has never been told before in fiction. But Rachel's life, though shadowed by disease, isolation, and tragedy, is also one of joy, courage, and dignity. This is a story about life, not death; hope, not despair. It is not about the failings of flesh, but the strength of the human spirit.

UPDATE: Jill said, "I just finished Moloka'i and it was an excellent historical account of Hawaii. While I found some historical issues with the book, I walked away with a greater sense of Hawaiian history. My review."
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Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over. Smooth-talking TV psychic Dylan Swift is on the island and claims to have a message from beyond-from Helen Gruber. Monk has his doubts about Swift's credibility. But finding the killer and proving Swift a fraud-all while coping with geckos and the horror of unsynchronized ceiling fans-may prove a tough coconut to crack.

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."