October 21, 2008

Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Decisions made in the passion of drama leaves a father with a secret that will eventually destroy the one he seeks most ardently to protect.  That same decision fills a void in another’s life.  Follow the lives of two families as children grow up and parents grow apart in the quest for happiness. Please click here for discussion questions.

November 18, 2008

Wish You Well by David Baldacci

Author David Baldacci takes us back to the area where he grew up in the story of an adolescent girl who suffers the loss of her father and mother, the first by death and the second by departure into a black night of the mind.  Lou and her brother Oz travel from New York City, along with their comatose mother, to the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia to live with their great-grandmother Louisa.  Here, Lou will meet the people her father wrote about:  she falls in love with the beauty of the area and finds herself involved in a battle she never dreamed of fighting. Please click here for discussion questions.

December 16, 2008

In Memory of Junior by Clyde Edgerton

Many of Summerlin’s social interactions take place in the Baptist Cemetery where families gather to take care of their plots.  Two citizens are in their last days and funerals are in the making: Glenn and Laura Bales have their final resting spaces prearranged, but a renegade from their past is vying for the same spot.  The Bales and the McCords might just carry a personal vendetta to the grave. Please click here for discussion questions.

January 20, 2009

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

Mao's Cultural Revolution swept over China in 1971, effectively removing intellectuals from public view.  In an effort to “reform” two adolescent boys, authorities send them to live in the country where they are forced to work in the coal mines and carry buckets of human excrement—used to fertilize the fields—up and down a mountain.  The harshness of their new life seems more bearable when they discover beauty in books borrowed from a new friend named Four Eyes.  Eventually, Luo and the narrator plan to steal a suitcase of books to use in transforming the Little Seamstress into an elegant woman.  They succeed in their undertaking, but in the end, create more pain than happiness. Please click here for discussion questions.