Green Heart

Alice Hoffman's book Green Heart is a gem. It contains the text of 2 related novels: Green Angel and Green Witch. It is a lyrical examination of grief and the way forward. Sixteen-year-old Green is the one who was left behind. She is the one who speaks to plants, coaxes them to grow and ripen. These skills cannot prepare her for the day that her kind parents and her lovely, changeable, moon-bright sister go to town and do not come back.

A Country Called Home

Welcome to Fife, Idaho, a tight-knit, rural community and compelling character in Kim Barnes' novel, A Country Called Home. For years, pharmacist Burt Kalinosky - or Dr. K as the locals call him - managed the medical needs of that small community from "menstruation, childbirth through menopause" and he is a bit bemused to hear that Tom and Helen Deracotte, a New England doctor and his pregnant wife, bought the old Bateman place - sight unseen. The news also causes quite a stir among the area old-timers who know better than to buy a farm without walking the fence line and weighing the soil.

So Long, See You Tomorrow

First, I want to emphatically state that I never pick reading material to complement my geographical location. Yet before heading to farmland in the Heartland, I grabbed this drama played out between tenant farmers in the 1920's and then it grabbed me while I lazed away an afternoon on the porch of a 1910 Sears Roebuck Modern Home.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell is a telescopic look into a tragedy that claimed the lives of two neighboring farmers. Fifty years after the incident a townie, connected to the deaths through his friendship with the killer's son, reflects on the events that unfolded to culminate in murder and the families' fragmentation.

GLBT Favorites

Our GLBT Services Committee is hosting a great author event in April, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk it up and recommend some other favorite books, too! Sister Spit is a dynamic audio/visual performance headlined by Dorothy Allison and Michelle Tea, plus other special guests. They will be performing with two free shows at Fluxx Gallery, 414 E. 9th St., on Saturday, April 7th, at 4 and 9pm. (Dorothy Allison will be at the first show only.) Read on for more GLBT books...

Death, Cataloged

I'm a big believer in judging a book by its cover! I browse the library's new arrivals all the time, looking for a catchy title, an author I've heard good things about, or a description that grabs me. The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham was one that appealed to two very different sides of me: the one that loves catalogs (naturally, since I work at the library!), and the one that morbidly enjoys grief memoirs. In this National Book Award finalist, Wickersham crafts the stark, painful story of her father's suicide, organized in an index.