OPENING LINES:
September is like a quiet day after a whole week of wind. I mean real wind that blows dirt into your eyes and hair and between your teeth and roars in your ears after you’ve gone inside.
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This is the story of a year and a half in the life of a young woman named Ellen Webb. Her father is from a substantial New England family and her mother a poor peasant from rural Russia. They met during World War I when her father was stationed in Russia then wounded and nursed back to health by the young woman with whom he falls in love. When he brought his bride home she was not accepted by his traditional New England family. So the young couple bought a ranch in eastern Montana where they are both accepted. Together they established a dry land wheat farm and adjust to the cycle of good and bad years.
Ellen grows up an only child. When it is time for her to go to college they have a full crop and prices are good so they can send Ellen to college. She goes off to college in Minnesota, meets a young man from Vermont and they become engaged. When she brings him home to the meet her family he is shocked by the isolation and the foreignness of her mother and he breaks off the engagement. When the next year’s crop is bad and there is no money for Ellen to go back to college, she takes a job teaching in a one room school house. There she experiences tragedy and misunderstanding. When she returns home she learns to love the beauty and isolation of the high plains and to be proud of her heritage.
This is not a new book, having first been published in 1944 and then reissued in 1992 by the University of Nebraska Press. But it doesn’t matter how old the book it. It is a timeless story about dealing with people and difficult circumstances.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Winter Wheat
OPENING LINE:
There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape.
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Rebecca Skloot almost failed her high school biology class. But her teacher told her about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells and then and there she planned one day to write a book about the subject. After getting a BS in biology and a Masters in journalism she became a science writer, and wrote this book. Henreitta Lacks was a poor Africian American woman, the daughter of a tobacco grower from small town Virginia. She was raised mostly by her grandfather, married her cousin and had five children. In 1951 she died at Johns Hopkins Hospital of cervical cancer. What makes her famous, though is the fact that some of the cells taken from her tumor became the first human cells to survive and grow in a culture medium. As such they helped make the polio vacine and have been involved in countless medical studies. These remarkable cells are known as HeLa cells. In the 1970′s her family found out that Henrietta’s cells had been used in this way, though they did not understand and no one explained to them. This book is about Henietta’s decendents learning of the importance of the cells and beginnig to pull themselves out of poverty. It is written with an even-hand and positive tone. Read it if you are interested in science, social justice, or family histories.
OPENING LINE:
It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.
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The year is 1945, World War II has ended. Claire Beauchamp and her husband are on holiday in Scotland. Having served as a combat nurse in the British army, she needs the rest. But then one day when she touches one of the standing stones in an ancient stone circle she is transported back in time to the year 1743, just before the Jacobite Rebellion. There she encounters an English officer who looks like her husband but does not act like him. And then she meets Jaimie Fraser who will change her entire life. With one action scene after another, this book is hard to put down! It made me glad that this is just the first book in a great series!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Outlander
GREAT LINES:
Yet though the bridge might last still for many years, the rust would eat deeper and deeper. The earthquake would shake the foundations, and then on some stormy day a span would go down. Like the man, so the creation of man would not last forever.
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A young man, Ish, is a graduate student at Berkeley who goes on a camping trip. On this outing he is bitten by a rattlesnake and forced to doctor the wound himself. When he recovers he walks down the mountain and finds that the people of the world have been wiped out by disease. He adopts a dog and takes up residence in his parents’ empty house. On outings he does encounter some survivors but they seem to either be living in the past or have mental problems. In his solitude he drives to New York City and back. Again the people he meets are not those with whom he wants to share his life. Then one evening he sees fireplace smoke coming from West Berkeley. What happens when Ish discovers other people he can form a tribe with gives this early post-apocalyptic story its most human elements. And as an added bonus the descriptions of the landscapes are truly amazing. I cannot get them out of my head!
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Earth Abides
OPENING LINES:
The silence is shattered by the barking of a dog. The mother looks up from the sink and stares out of the window.
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This book, translated from the orginial Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund, fits into the category of “Scandinavian Mysteries.” It takes place in the small town of Elvestad in a rural area of Norway similar to the one where the author lives. Gunder Jomann is a bachelor and successful farm equipment salesman who becomes fascinated with the people and the country of India. When he takes a vacation to India he meets the woman of his dreams and marries her. On his return to Norway he gives her money and a ticket and she is to follow him. But on the day she is supposed to arrive Gunder is unable to get to the airport. When there is a report of a murdered foreign woman he wonders if this could be his new wife? Inspector Sejer steps in to investigate and does so in an understanding tolerant way. He is persistent and forthright asking questions from the villagers point of view and contemplating their answers to try and understand their thinking and motives. The ending is hard to predict but this book is as much about how Sejer solves the crime as it is about the solution. I am not usually a mystery lover but am embracing the idea of reading other books in this series.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Indian Bride
OPENING LINE:
The first time I saw the empty store on Blossom Street I thought of my father.
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Lydia Hoffman is a cancer survivor and the owner of the yarn shop on Blossom Street. She starts a class teaching how to make a baby blanket which three other women join. Jacqueline is recently divorced and she really dislikes her pregnant daughter-in-law. But she is hopeful that will change when she knits a baby blanket for her. Carol and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for a long time, and she thinks perhaps knitting a baby blanket will help. Alex is a younger woman who has been ordered by the court to do community service and she decides to join the class to knit a baby blanket and donate it to a worthy cause. This is the story of four individual women and their troubles. But even more, it is the story of how they come together to help each other with friendship and community as the result.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Shop on Blossom Street
OPENING LINE:
When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake–not a very big one.
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This 1985 Pulitzer Prize winner is the story of two retired Texas rangers. In the years following the Civil War they lead one of the first cattle drives from Texas to Montana. They have rivers to cross, bandits to deal with and clashes with Native Americans. The book is real dealing with real people in the backdrop of a big open country. First, you have the friendship between Gus and Call, the two old rangers. Then Gus still has a crush on a woman from his past who the pair meet on their way to Montana. There are people trying to do good and those that are bitter. With these characters and the well-written landscapes, McMurtry has brought this period of history to life. My grandfather was a cowboy at this time in history and through that lens I could picture every thing that happens in the story.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: Lonesome Dove
GREAT LINES:
Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original.
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At the end of World War I German sniper Fidelis Waldvogel returns to the village where he grew up. He marries Eva, the pregnant girlfriend of his best friend who had been killed in the war. But he wants to start a new life in America so he sets out for Seattle. When his money runs out in Argus, North Dakota Fidelis gets a job working for the local butcher. Soon he has earned enough money to send for Eva and her baby and then to open his own butcher shop. Argus where they live is a town filled with a cast of quirky characters. Roy is the town drunk and Delphine was raised by him but does not know her own family. Then there is Step-and-a-Half, one of the town’s homeless who is constantly walking across the vast prairie. The Master Butchers Singing Club is a story about the good and bad in people and how they play out in the characters lives.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Master Butchers Singing Club
GREAT LINE:
Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me into opening a people door for him, which he preferred.
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Dan Davis is on the verge of amazing riches when he successfully invents a household robot. But he is betrayed by his business partner and fiancee and his company is sold to a big corporation. He does get some money out of the deal and Dan uses that money to put himself into suspended animation. When he wakes up he finds that his money and his stocks are gone. Luckily in the time he has been asleep time travel has become possible. Now he needs to go back in time to set things right. There are many complications and plot twists as Dan works to be reunited with his soul mate and recover his fortune. At the same time Dan is trying to be reunited with his cat Pete. Pete is one of the great characters in this book and the title references him. When Pete finds that there is snow out of one door he asks Dan to open all of the other doors in the house to see if they might be a door into summer. Not only is this a charming bit of the story, it is also a good analogy for the novel’s plot as Dan keeps looking for a way into a sunnier situation.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Door Into Summer
OPENING LINE:
Properly trained a man can be a dog’s best friend.
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This is the story of Fiona Bristow and her three dogs. She lives in a little cottage on an island off the coast of Washington state. Her dogs are trained to be rescue dogs and she runs a dog training business. This sounds like a good life. But Fiona is the only survivor of a serial killer called “The Red Scarf Killer”. That man is still in prison but he has trained another man to copy his style and this man is coming after Fiona because she was the one that got away. To complicate matters, there is also a man named Simon who has recently moved onto the island and his young dog, Jaws, needs training. Could Simon be the one to share the rest of Fiona’s life? This book is especially good for how it weaves together a murder mystery with a romance in a very interesting way.
Check the BPL catalog for this title: The Search