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2005 - 2006
The Ha Ha
by Dave King
As the result of an injury received in Vietnam, Howie Kapostash cannot speak, read, or write. He carries a card that says “I am of normal intelligence,” but “normal” people avoid him. Unable to communicate, Howie lives in his own carefully constructed and controlled world. His daily companions are the boarders he has taken in to make a little income and the nuns at the convent where he works as a gardener. His boarders are Laurel, a Vietnamese-American woman who makes and sells soups and Harrison and Stevie, perpetual adolescents who work as house painters. When Howie agrees to take care of his ex-girlfriend Sylvia’s son while she goes into drug rehab, the Kapostash household and Howie’s world are turned topsy-turvy.
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Related Websites
Dave King: Official Website
Author Interview
Stolen Figs
by Mark Rotella
Calabria, the region at the toe of Italy’s boot, is not a glamorous tourist mecca like Tuscany, Venice or Rome. Mark Rotella wanted to visit the region because that is where his family came from. His father, who hadn’t been back in thirty years, is at first reluctant to accompany his son, but finally agrees to the trip, and the two of them travel to the village where Mark’s father grew up.
After the first visit, Mark returns several times alone. He is “obsessed with watering my Calabrian roots, with strengthening the strands between myself and the land that my grandparents had left.”
Mark travels the entire region with Giuseppe, postcard seller and Mark’s self-appointed guide. Together they visit villages where they partake of the hospitality, participate in religious festivals, and enjoy the food and wine.
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About the Author
Calabria
Summarized History of Calabria
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See
At age 7, Lily, a village girl in 19th century China, must begin the preparation for her marriage. Her footbinding must be properly done so she will have the “golden lotuses” prized by men and be able to make a good match. Enduring the footbinding ritual shows she can bear pain and that she is obedient. Lily is pledged by her parents in a formal relationship with Snow Flower, a girl who lives in a neighboring village. The “laotong” means they will be friends throughout their lives, sharing the joys and sorrows of marriage and childbearing and attending festivals together. Lily’s devotion to Snow Flower will be tested when she finds out that her friend’s family is not what they seem and begins to doubt Snow Flower’s trustworthiness.
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About the Author
Foot Binding
Chinese Foot Binding
The Forbidden Tongue
Nushu
The Taiping Rebellion
Related Reading
March
by Geraldine Brooks
It is 1861 and the cruel war is raging. Young men from Concord are signing up to fight for the Union. Too old to be a soldier, Mr. March feels compelled to serve his country in some fashion and signs on as an army chaplain. Repulsed by the slaughter and perplexed by his inability to reach the men, March resigns as chaplain and accepts a post teaching freed slaves on a plantation. There he encounters further horrors and injustices and is wounded by rebels. He contracts a fever and is hospitalized in Washington, D.C., where his wife, Marmee, joins him. Marmee struggles to understand her husband’s demons and to deal with his past betrayals.
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The Optimist's Daughter
by Eudora Welty
Laurel McKelva’s father, a retired judge, has seriously injured his eye, and Laurel must return to the small town in Mississippi where she grew up to be with him during this crisis. Laurel is widowed and works as an artist in Chicago. When Judge McKelva dies shortly after surgery, Laurel has to deal with spoiled and demanding Fay, his much younger wife, and with the neighbors and friends who rally around to comfort her. Laurel, who deliberately separated herself from her past life and surroundings, finds herself finally able to examine her losses and memories.
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Related Websites
The Mississippi Writers Page: Eudora Welty
USAdeepsouth.com: Eudora Welty by Mary Pat Hyland
BBC News: Author Eudora Welty Dies
An Unfinished Season
by Ward Just
Wilson (Wils) Ravan looks back on the summer he was 19, when he learned about power, about relationships and about becoming a man. It was the 1950’s. Eisenhower was president, Senator Joe McCarthy was conducting hearings to root out Communists everywhere, the post-war business boom was booming, and life was good for Wils, who worked as a newspaper copy boy by day and danced at debutante balls by night. Despite the economic prosperity enjoyed by the middle class, of which Wils’s father, owner of a printing firm, was an example, there was chaos and turmoil in the air. The stability of Wils’s family life began to crack as his mother and father drew apart. A strike at the printing plant brought a threat of violence into their serene world. Just has written a thoughtful, meditative novel that captures the tensions and conflict of Chicago in the 50’s, along with the puzzlement of a young man crossing the threshold of adulthood.
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Case Histories
by Kate Atkinson
A child wanders away during the night and is never
found; a young woman has her throat slashed by a man in
a yellow golf sweater; the mother of a young child is
found holding a bloody ax over her husband’s body. PI
Jackson Brodie, a divorced ex-cop who longs to retire to a
quiet life in southern France, takes on all three of these
decades-old cases. As he haphazardly follows leads, he
finds curious connections among them. Jackson is a doting
and overprotective father with a weakness for attractive
women and fast cars. Despite his attempts to cultivate a
tough-guy, Philip Marlowe swagger, he betrays his
vulnerability by becoming unaccountably and
sentimentally attached to his clients. This novel, by turns
sad and funny and always surprising, is about family love
and resentments, the quirkiness of fate and human
connections.
Questions
Related Websites
A Writer's Life: Kate Atkinson (arts.telegraph)
The Hamilton Case
by Michelle de Kretser
Sam Obeysekere, born in 1902 to a wastrel father and a social butterfly mother, and a member of the colonial elite of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), was educated in England. He believes in the superiority of all things British. By the time Sam is an adult, his parents have squandered the family fortune, leaving only a dilapidated country estate for their children to inherit. Sam marries well and becomes a lawyer. While on a trip upcountry, he hears about the scandalous murder of a tea planter named Angus Hamilton. He sets out to solve the case, using his self-described superior powers of reasoning, and uncovers clues that lead him to the conclusion that the coolies accused of the crime are innocent. Sam points the finger instead at a British subject, naively believing that his meddling in the case will not harm his legal career. Set against a background of social and political change in Sri Lanka, this complex novel is told from several perspectives.
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The Last Crossing
by Guy Vanderhaeghe
Two sons of wealthy and tyrannical English industrialist Henry Gaunt travel to the United States to search for their brother Simon, lost on a missionary expedition to convert the Indians. Brothers Charles and Addington could not be more different. Addington, the soldier, is self-centered, hedonistic and unstable; Charles, the artist, is sensitive but unsure of himself. With Jerry Potts, a half-Blackfoot, half-Scot guide, they travel into the northern wilderness, where Simon was last seen. Their party expands to include a volatile assortment of characters, each following his or her personal quest. The land is rugged; the society violent. Award-winning Canadian author Vanderhaeghe has crafted an exciting story of epic proportions.
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The Sniper's Wife
by Archer Mayor
The sniper of the title is Willy Kunkle, a detective in Joe Gunther’s Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Willy is a tenacious investigator, with an irascible manner that would have gotten him fired long ago, if not for Joe’s intervention. When the NYPD contacts Willy to identify the body of his ex-wife, dead of a drug overdose, he is not satisfied with their verdict of suicide. As he pursues clues and talks to people with whom his wife was involved, Willy is pulled back into his troubled past, especially his failed marriage and his service in Vietnam, where he earned the nickname “the sniper”. Psychological insights into characters and riveting plots are the hallmarks of Mayor’s fiction, and The Sniper’s Wife is no exception.
Questions
Related Websites
What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder?
Archer Mayor's Website
A Historical Resume of Potter's Field
Official New York City Police Department
Related Readings
Titles Selected by Suzanne Fisher, Librarian
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