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Staff
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 This
Month's Staff Recommends
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Recommended by Rebecca Berkowitz, Main
Library Reference Librarian
 The Late Homecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia
Yang. B Yang, K. Yang.
Yang, who was born in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand, tells the
story of her family and thousands of other Hmong who supported the
United States in Laos during the Vietnam War. After the war this
ethnic group without a homeland was forced to flee local reprisals.
From primitive refugee camps in Thailand the American government
eventually resettled their former allies in the United States. In
many ways these disenfranchised people then followed the classic
immigration experience, but they were also unique. They came from a
non-Western rainforest culture about which most Americans knew
nothing. Hmong religion, medicine, and folklore are famously ill
suited to American life and yet they persisted. A beautifully
written, unforgettable journey.
 The
Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. Fiction.
The author of the beloved Crow Lake returns us to a
small town in Northern Canada and a tale as old as time: two
brothers in a family where each parent has a favorite son, the
younger can think circles around the older, and both brothers are in
love with the same girl. The story is rich in context and social
history, as the community weathers the Depression, World War II and
the betrayal of those ill suited to this isolated community. Those
who remain do so for their own unique reasons.
 Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in
the Bronx by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. 306.85 LeBlanc.
LeBlanc spent ten years following a large extended Latino family
living in the South Bronx. The resulting book is a rare look at the
world through the eyes of her subjects. The author scrupulously
removes herself from the narrative, allowing her characters lives to
unfold without comment or characterization. The reader comes to
understand the struggle required to survive the unrelenting grind of
living in deep urban poverty. Obviously the issues defy easy
answers, but this work goes a long way towards explaining the
problem.
Top
Reviewed in 2008
You'll find more ideas on the Reader
Services Page, the Fiction
Booklist Section and among our previous Staff Recommendations.
Recommended by Mary Murphy, Main
Library Circulation Staff
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. Fiction.
 I have grown to love reading first novels, and this is no exception. Mudbound is a novel set in 1946 in the cotton fields of Mississippi,
a reminder of the struggles and the racial conflicts of this time in
the Delta. The story is told by the six characters whose lives
revolve around Laura, a college-educated woman who has grown up in
the city. When Laura marries Henry, she is displaced to Mississippi,
where she lives in a shack with no indoor plumbing, along with her
husband's father, Pappy, a man with no redeeming qualities. Other
characters include the black sharecroppers on the farm; their son,
Ronsel, a returning soldier from Germany; and Henry's brother,
Jamie, also a returning veteran. I don't want to give this
beautifully crafted story away but I urge you to read it; I hope
that you enjoy it as much as I did. The author, Hillary Jordan, was
awarded the Bellwether Prize for Fiction for this novel.
Recommended by Judith Rosenbaum, McAuliffe
Library Circulation Staff
Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. Fiction.
 First published in 1948, Paton's loving tribute to his homeland is a
story of two families trying to overcome hardship and sorrow,
mirrored by the struggle of Africa under white rule. Stephen Kumalo,
an aging country pastor, travels to Johannesburg to find his son
Absalom. He arrives to find that Absalom has been arrested for the
senseless murder of Arthur Jarvis, a white man who had devoted his
life to helping black people. Arthur's heartbroken father, James,
comes to Johannesburg to settle his son's affairs and finds his
son's writings about the state of race relations in South Africa.
The elder Jarvis is so deeply moved by his son's love of his country
and concern for its people that he returns to his home a changed
man.
As a loving tribute to his son, Jarvis, a wealthy farmer, decides to
revive Kumalo's village and improve the land, so that the young
people will be more likely to remain at home and not fall victim to
the ways of the city.
One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd
by Jim Fergus. Fiction.
 Through the journals of May Dodd, we learn of the "Brides for
Indians" program, brought about through a secret treaty between the
US government and Little Wolf, chief of the Cheyenne. In return for
1,000 horses, the US government would give the Cheyenne 1,000 brides
to bear children who would eventually become assimilated into white
culture. The brides-women from jails, debtors' prisons, and mental
institutions-are offered full pardons or unconditional release for
their participation in the program. May Dodd, child of a wealthy
Chicago family, has been committed to a lunatic asylum by her father
as punishment for marrying one of her father's employees. Jim
Fergus, with great insight, imbues May with the gift of beautiful
prose, humor and the will to succeed as she embarks on this great
adventure, her last chance to live as a free woman.
Recommended by Lucy Loveridge, Main Library
Children's Librarian
If you like your whiskey and your genres straight up, this column's not
for you. But if you enjoy an occasional cocktail or story with a twist,
these two tales of tough guy troubleshooters in trouble will be right up
your alley.
The Man with the Golden Torc by Simon R. Green. Science
Fiction.
 Edwin Drood, aka Shaman Bond, is the black sheep of a powerful and
mysterious family that's been offering protection to humans for
centuries. Protection from what? From the things that go bump in the
night, the hidden world of demons, elves, fairies, werewolves and other
malevolent magical creatures that exist side by side with and interact
with normal humans if you know how to see them. In a clever and more
adult mix of Harry Potter and James Bond, Eddie gets
betrayed in true noir style and has to clear his name, find the true
villains, and unravel their huge conspiracy before he's killed by the
rest of his family and all his old enemies.
Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan. Science Fiction.
 Life is complicated and it only gets more so when consciousness is
located in a little block of altered carbon at the back of your skull,
and it can be transferred into any physical "sleeve" at any time or
stored digitally for centuries. Takeshi Kovacs, former Harlan's World
gang member, army grunt and Envoy for the UN Special Forces has drifted
back into semi-legal activities. When one of his ventures goes wrong, he
comes back from death on Earth, contracted out to solve a rich man's
suicide while wearing the body of a corrupt policeman. Despite his
cynicism and world-weary air, when it gets personal Kovacs shows his
sentimental side and follows his personal code of ethics to bring down
the truly corrupt and evil. A fine mix of Bladerunner
and Chinatown.
Recommended by
Mary Wasmuth, Collection Development Librarian
Home away from home: Weird and occasionally wonderful relationships
among characters who hang out in places that are no one's home.
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan. Fiction.
 It's December 20, a blizzard is forecast, and Manny DeLeon must find a
way to shepherd through its final day the terminated New Britain,
Connecticut, Red Lobster he's managed for years. Amidst accumulating
snow and a bizarre assortment of customers, and with a staff riddled
with hostility, alliances, love, and crime, Manny struggles fruitlessly
to retain his dignity and to keep the Lobster open. Contained within
these 146 pages is a portrait of an intense, richly populated world,
which features, at its center, Manny—ardent, bumbling, idealistic,
flawed: a hero for our time.
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. Fiction.
 The shallow, feckless young denizens of a Chicago ad agency narrate this
acclaimed first novel set during the Internet bust. As the book
proceeds, individuals-amusing, back biting, lunatic, eternally
gossipy-emerge from the crowd of "we's" to squabble over status, obsess
about stolen chairs, fire off ill-considered emails. Just as you might
be tiring of these folks, you encounter a section told in conventional
third person, and the novel's perspective darkens and deepens, until-who
knows—you may even glimpse a hero, somewhere at the edge of your
peripheral vision.
Later, At the Bar by Rebecca Barry. Fiction.
 There's not a trace of a hero in Later, At the Bar, a collection of
linked, beautifully wrought stories that illuminate the (mostly) sad
lives and (mostly) fleeting loves of the hard-drinking, much-married,
occasionally jailed romantics who hang out at Lucy's Tavern, in an
upstate New York town so bleak it lacks even the requisite shut-down
factory. If I tell you these stories are nevertheless bracing and
engaging and funny, you likely won't believe me—but just open this brief
book anywhere and try out a sentence or two. You won't look back.
Recommended by Sherry Baker, Assistant Branch Librarian
Some biographical and autobiographical selections from the new
Non-Fiction Quick Pick display at McAuliffe Branch:
 Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers
by Elizabeth Edwards (B Edwards)
Whatever your politics, you'll be charmed by this inspiring memoir by the wife of presidential candidate John Edwards. Through campaigning, breast cancer, and the loss of a child, she is sustained by the support of the people around her.
 River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice
Millard (B Roosevelt)
Following his defeat in the 1912 presidential election, Theodore Roosevelt challenged himself with an adventurous, physically punishing journey through an unmapped tributary of the Amazon with his son and a Brazilian explorer. In this fascinating account he endures whitewater rapids, Indian attacks, disease, starvation, and near-death.
 Love in Black and White: A Memoir of Race, Religion, and Romance by William S. Cohen with Janet Langhart Cohen (B Cohen)
This is the inspiring story of the unlikely union of a white man who served as Republican Senator from Maine and Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, and an African American model and television personality, who appeared on Boston television in the 1970s.
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