2018 AAUW Literary suggestions

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. c June 2017. 352p. Ballantine. Booklist review. Newly engaged Avery Stafford leaves her job as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., to go back home to South Carolina, where she is being groomed to succeed her ailing father, a U.S. senator. At a meet-and-greet at a nursing home, she encounters May, a woman who seems to have some link with Avery’s Grandma Judy, now suffering from dementia. The reader learns early on that May was once Rill Foss, one of five siblings snatched from their shanty home on the Mississippi and taken to the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. The society seems too Dickensian to be true, except that it was, and its black-market adoption practices caused a stir in the mid-twentieth century. Rill’s harrowing account of what befell the Foss children and Avery’s piecing together (with the help of a possible new love interest) of how Rill and Grandma Judy’s stories converge are skillfully blended. Wingate writes with flair, and her distinctly drawn characters and adept use of the adoption scandal will keep readers turning the pages.— Mary Ellen Quinn reviewer Wayne Co. Pubic Library – CLEVNET - 56 Largeprint copies, 163 print copies

Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. 524p. publishing. c05/01/2017. Library summary. Soon to be a major motion picture from Pascal Pictures, starring Tom Holland. Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, the #1 Amazon Charts bestseller Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man's incredible courage and resilience during one of history's darkest hours. Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager-- obsessed with music, food, and girls--but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino's parents force him to enlist as a German soldier--a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler's left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich's most mysterious and powerful commanders. Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share. Fans of All the Light We Cannot See , The Nightingale , and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love. Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET – 10 Largeprint copies, 2 MP3 disc copies, 9 Audiobook CD copies, 44 print copies.

1 The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant Series #5) by Josephine Tey. 208p. c11/28/1995. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains—a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Little Princes in the Tower. The Daughter of Time is an ingeniously plotted, beautifully written, and suspenseful tale, a supreme achievement from one of mystery writing’s most gifted masters. Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 40 print copies, 3 Audiobook CD copies, 1 MP3 discs copy, 2 Largeprint copies.

Educated: Memoir by Tara Westover. c Feb. 2018. 327p. Random. Booklist review. To the Westovers, public education was the quickest way to put yourself on the wrong path. By the time the author, the youngest Westover, had come along, her devout Mormon parents had pulled all of their seven children out of school, preferring to teach just the essentials: a little bit of reading, a lot of scripture, and the importance of family and a hard day’s work. Westover’s debut memoir details how her isolated upbringing in the mountains of Idaho led to an unexpected outcome: Cambridge, Harvard, and a PhD. Though Westover’s entrance into academia is remarkable, at its heart, her memoir is a family history: not just a tale of overcoming but an uncertain elegy to the life that she ultimately rejected. Westover manages both tenderness and a savage honesty that spares no one, not even herself: nowhere is this more powerful than in her relationship with her brother Shawn, her abuser and closest friend. In its keen exploration of family, history, and the narratives we create for ourselves, Educated becomes more than just a success story. — Amanda Winterroth reviewer Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 19 Audiobook CD copies, 101 print copies, 12 Largeprint copies

Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of An Unlikely Hero And the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives In World War II by Vicki Croke. c2014. . 343p. Library summary. Billy Williams came to Burma in 1920 fresh from service in World War I, as a "forest man" for a British teak company. Mesmerized by the intelligence, character, and even humor of the great animals who hauled logs through the jungles, he became a gifted "elephant wallah." When the Japanese invaded in 1942, Williams joined Force 136, the British dirty tricks department. His war elephants carried supplies, built bridges, and transported the sick and elderly. And when a price was put on his head, they set out on a Hollywood-worthy escape. Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 42 print copies, 6 digital ebooks,

2 Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. 240p. Riverhead, Booklist review. In an unnamed city with strict social mores, young Nadia is a rebel, an atheist who chooses to live and work independently. In religious and unassuming Saeed she finds the perfect companion. As the two fall in love, their romance is tinged with a sense of urgency and inevitability as the city falls to militia, and basic freedoms and food quickly become rarities. When the situation turns dire, Saeed and Nadia decide to migrate as thousands already have and cobble together every last bit of their savings to find safe passage out. Caught in the whirlpool of refugees from around the world, Saeed and Nadia are tossed around like flotsam, the necessity of survival binding them together more than any starry-eyed notion of romance ever could. The concept of the door is a powerful, double-edged metaphor here, representing a portal leading to a promised land that when closed, however, condemns one to fates from which there is no escape. -- Poornima Apte reviewer Wayne Co Library – CLEVNET – 88 print copies, 1Overdrive Listen copy, 1 digital version copy.

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story by Hyeonseo . 320p. c 05/19/2016. Barnes and Noble summary. An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom.As a child growing up in North , Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told “the best on the planet”? Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family. Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 9 print copies

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. 592p. Hogarth, Booklist review. Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2006), here turns to adult fiction to deliver the epic story of Cyril Avery. Cyril’s story proceeds by seven-year intervals as readers meet the characters who will populate the crowded stage of his life. Among them are Julian, the beautiful young man with whom Cyril is obsessed (Cyril is gay; Julian is straight); Bastiaan, the Dutch man who is the love of Julian’s life; Ignac, the Slovenian boy who will become their surrogate son; and more. Boyne, who has a wonderful gift for characterization, does a splendid job of weaving these various lives together in ways that are richly dramatic, sometimes surprising, and always compelling. A vividly realized theme in the novel is the inhumane treatment of homosexuals in Ireland, largely at the behest of the Roman Catholic Church. Accordingly, the fear of being outed will cause Cyril to make some life-changing mistakes that, in context, are altogether plausible. Often quite funny, the story nevertheless has its sadness, sometimes approaching tragedy. Utterly captivating and not to be missed.— Michael Cart reviewer. Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 1 Overdrive MP3 copy, 1 digital ebook, 45 print copies, 6 Largeprint copies.

3 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann. 352p. illus. Doubleday. Booklist review. During the early 1920s, many members of the Osage Indian Nation were murdered, one by one. After being forced from several homelands, the Osage had settled in the late nineteenth century in an unoccupied area of Oklahoma, chosen precisely because it was “rocky, sterile, and utterly unfit for cultivation.” No white man would covet this land; Osage people would be happy. Then oil was soon discovered below the Osage territory, speedily attracting prospectors wielding staggering sums and turning many Osage into some of the richest people in the world. Grann centers this true-crime mystery on Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who lost several family members as the death tally grew, and Tom White, the former Texas Ranger whom J. Edgar Hoover sent to solve the slippery, attention-grabbing case once and for all. A secondary tale of Hoover’s single-minded rise to power as the director of what would become the FBI, his reshaping of the bureau’s practices, and his goal to gain prestige for federal investigators provides invaluable historical context. Grann employs you-are-there narrative effects to set readers right in the action, and he relays the humanity, evil, and heroism of the people involved.— Annie Bostrom reviewer. Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET – 22 Audiobook CD copies, copies print copies, 3 Pre-loaded Audiobook copies, 24 Largeprint copies, 1 digital copy, 1 Overdrive MP3 copy

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. c Sept. 2017. 370p. Penguin. Booklist review. Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a by-the-books kind of town. Longtime residents know the well- established rules of conduct. Newcomers, such as itinerant artist Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, must find out for themselves what is acceptable and what is not. Renting an apartment from city-native Elena Richardson should give Mia and Pearl a leg up. Instead, it throws them into the midst of a fraught custody battle concerning a Chinese American baby; engenders fierce rivalries between brothers Moody and Trip Richardson for Pearl’s attention; and casts Mia as the unlikely confidant of the Richardson daughters, popular Lexie and outcast Izzy.. Ng’s stunning second novel is a multilayered examination of how identities are forged and maintained, how families are formed and friendships tested, and how the notion of motherhood is far more fluid than bloodlines would suggest.— Carol Haggas reviewer Wayne Co. Public – CLEVNET - 59 Audiobook CD copies, 12 Pre-loaded Audiobook copies, 355 print copies.

One Good Dog by Susan Wilson. 320p. St. Martin’s. Booklist review. Adam March is a married father and successful businessman poised to become a CEO— that is, until the day his troubled past catches up with him. Soon Adam has lost his job, his family, and his house and is living in a lonely apartment working off his community-service sentence in a local men’s shelter. Adam’s story alternates with that of Chance, a former fighting pit bull who has escaped, lived on the streets, and is now back at the animal shelter. When circumstances require Adam to adopt and care for Chance, he comes to realize the joy and comfort of animal companionship. Adam’s and Chance’s tale is one of love, loyalty, and determination, as both fight to begin new lives and relationships..— Jessica Moyer reviewer. Wayne Co. Public – CLEVNET – 1 digital copy, 42 print copies, 14 Audiobook CD copies, 8 Largeprint copies.

4 Poetry Will Save Your Life by Jill Bialosky. c Aug. 2017. Atria, 240p. Booklist review. All facets of poet, novelist, memoirist, and editor Bialosky’s literary pursuits coalesce in this graceful and inspiriting entwinement of memories, poetry, and interpretation. Bialosky substantiates her assertion that poetry is lifesaving with superbly selected poems incisively linked to her experiences and beautifully elucidated. As she recounts her suburban Cleveland childhood, Bialosky revisits common first poems, including Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and remembers being at once “enchanted and puzzled” by poetry, apt responses at any age. The shock of a field trip that traversed a poor city neighborhood is paired with Langston Hughes’ “You and Your Whole Race. With brief poet biographies, this is a resplendent and invaluable anthology and an involving, richly illuminating narrative - Donna Seaman reviewer Wayne County Library – CLEVNET – 25 print copies.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. c Feb. 2017. 512p. Grand Central. Barnes and Noble summary. In this gorgeous, page-turning saga, four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan, exiled from a home they never knew. In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. Wayne Co. Library – CLEVNET – 49 print copies, 3 Pre-loaded Audiobook copies, 7 Largeprint copies, 6 Audiobook CD copies

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. cSept. 2017. 304p. Scribner. Booklist review. Jojo, 13, and his 3-year-old sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, while their mother, Leonie, struggles with drug addiction and her failures as a daughter, mother, and inheritor of a gift (or curse) that connects her to spirits. Leonie insists that Jojo and Kayla accompany her on a two-day journey to the infamous Parchman prison to retrieve their white father. Their harrowing experiences are bound up in unresolved and reverberating racial and family tensions and entanglements: long-buried memories of Pop’s time in Parchman, the imminent death of Mam from cancer, and the slow dawning of the children’s own spiritual gifts. Ward alternates perspectives to tell the story of a family in rural Mississippi struggling mightily to hold themselves together as they are assailed by ghosts reflecting all the ways humans create cruelty and suffering. Ward renders richly drawn characters, a strong sense of place, and a distinctive style that is at once down-to-earth and magical. — Vanessa Bush reviewer Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET – 1 Overdrive MP3 copy, 1 digital copy, 100 print copies, 19 Audiobook CD copies, 21 Largeprint copies.

5 The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg. cAug. 2017. 216p. Random. Booklist review. A cemetery might be an odd place for two people to strike up a friendship—especially an elderly man and a teenage girl—but Arthur Moses and Maddy Harris are fairly odd people. Arthur visits the cemetery to talk to his late wife, Nora, though he has a gift for divining the backstories of the graveyard’s other permanent residents. Maddy doesn’t have a personal connection to this particular cemetery, but she finds the quiet grounds peaceful after the chaos of school and the tension at home. They strike up conversations over picnic lunches and find they have more in common than they ever would have imagined. Maddy’s mother passed away when she was young, and Arthur is surprised to find that the teenager is wise beyond her years. This unlikely duo shares secrets, memories, and plans for the future in Elizabeth Berg’s inspiring and poignant novel. Redemptive without being maudlin, this story of two misfits lucky to have found one another will tug at readers’ heartstrings.— Stephanie Turza reviewer Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET – 141 print copies, 13 Audiobook CD copies, 4 Pre-loaded Audiobook copies, 41 Largeprint copies, 1 digital copy, 1 MP3 discs copy.

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel. cJan. 2017. 336p. Flatiron. Booklist review. Rosie and Penn Walsh-Adams and their five sons live in a sprawling farmhouse full of chaos, love, and fairy tales. One summer, youngest son Claude begins to wear dresses and bikinis around the house. Rosie and Penn encourage Claude to be himself, and he decides he would be more comfortable as Poppy. While Poppy’s brothers and parents accept her, they also all worry about the world she faces. The family deals with fallout from friends and teachers who struggle to understand a non-binary child. Though their city is generally accepting, Rosie wants to move the family to somewhere they can all feel safe. The family moves to Seattle and soon confronts new challenges. They acknowledge that Poppy is their daughter’s true identity, so is there any need to tell her new friends that she used to be Claude? The novel follows family members individually as they struggle with their own secrets and histories. Inspired by her own daughter’s transition, Frankel tells Poppy’s story with compassion and humor.— Laura Chanoux reviewer Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET – 1 Overdrive Listen MP3 copy, 1 digital copy, 12 Large print copies, 7 Audiobook CD copies, 42 print copies, 2 Pre-Loaded Audiobook copies,

A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. cFeb. 2005. 432p. Random. Booklist review Italian citizens saved more than 43,000 Jews during the last 20 months of World War II. Russell has transmuted this little-known history into an expansive, well-researched, and compelling novel. As the story opens, the mountainous region of northwest Italy has been relatively untouched by WWII, and even Jews have been safe. When Italy breaks with Germany in 1943 and pulls out of southern France, thousands of Jewish refugees cross the mountains in search of safety. But the German occupation of Italy poses a new threat. Even with the list that’s provided, it can be hard to keep track of all the characters--Catholics and Jews, priests and rabbis, Germans and Italians, old and young, Nazis and Resistance fighters. But Russell is good at presenting the human story while never using the war merely as a backdrop for personal dramas. In fact, to mirror the arbitrary nature of survival during wartime, she has said that she flipped a coin to determine who among her characters would live and who would die. — Mary Ellen Quinn reviewer Wayne Co. Public Library – CLEVNET - 51 print copies, 8 Audiobook CD copies, 1 Overdrive MP3 copy, 3 digital ebooks..

6 The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine Weiss c2018. 404p. Viking. Library summary – "Anyone interested in the history of our country's ongoing fight to put its founding values into practice would be well-served by picking up The Woman's Hour ." Nashville, August 1920. Thirty-five states have ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, twelve have rejected or refused to vote, and one last state is needed. It all comes down to Tennessee, the moment of truth for the suffragists, after a seven-decade crusade. The opposing forces include politicians with careers at stake, liquor companies, railroad magnates, and a lot of racists who don't want black women voting. And then there are the "Antis"--women who oppose their own enfranchisement, fearing suffrage will bring about the moral collapse of the nation. They all converge in a boiling hot summer for a vicious face-off replete with dirty tricks, betrayals and bribes, bigotry, Jack Daniel's, and the Bible. Following a handful of remarkable women who led their respective forces into battle, along with appearances by Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Frederick Douglass, and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Woman's Hour is an inspiring story of activists winning their own freedom in one of the last campaigns forged in the shadow of the Civil War, and the beginning of the great twentieth- century battles for civil rights. Wayne Co. Public Library – CLVENET – 1 Largeprint copy, 44 print copies.

7