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Biography and Memoir March 2017
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| Rise: How a House Built a Family by Cara BrookinsAfter escaping two abusive marriages, author Cara Brookins had four children to provide for and only herself to rely on. In Rise, she describes how, after her financial situation forced her to sell her home, she then realized that she and the children could build their own house. The book's alternating chapters detail Brookins' fearful existence with her former husbands and chronicle the house construction -- which also served to heal and rebuild her family. For a frank portrait of determination to prevail over daunting challenges, take a look at this engaging memoir. |
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| A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee's Incredible Story of Love, Loss... by Melissa FlemingAfter civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, eventually driving millions from their homes, 19-year-old Doaa Al Zamel and her family fled to Egypt. As the political situation there deteriorated, she and her new husband undertook a risky sea crossing to Europe, but their boat wrecked and many passengers drowned. Al Zamel's story was widely reported after she rescued a young child from the water, but in A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea we read more complete details of her "inspiring and illuminating" (Publishers Weekly) story. For additional accounts of the risks and dangers that Middle Eastern refugees are facing, check out Patrick Kingsley's The New Odyssey. |
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Disaster Falls : a family story
by Stéphane Gerson
Chronicles the aftermath of the author's 8-year-old son's drowning death during a family rafting trip, describing how the tragedy threatened to isolate their surviving family members as they processed wrenching grief in respective ways.
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Contemporary and Historic Women
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| Isabella: The Warrior Queen by Kirstin DowneyWhen Europe was beginning its transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, one of the most powerful monarchs was Isabella I of Castile. Though she's typically named second in the pair "Ferdinand and Isabella," she was the sovereign Queen, who unified Spain in an era of frequent wars, forced Moors and Jews to convert to Catholicism under threat of banishment, and funded Columbus' voyages to the Western Hemisphere on behalf of Spanish expansion. In Isabella, historian Kirstin Downey demonstrates why she was one of the most significant women in history. This detailed, engaging portrait displays the queen's "fingerprints on Renaissance culture and religion" (Publishers Weekly). |
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My Life, My Love, My Legacy
by Coretta Scott King, as told to Barbara Reynolds
Over the course of many years, Coretta Scott King's close friend, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds, recorded interviews with King about her experiences. In My Life, My Love, My Legacy, Reynolds assembles these accounts into an authorized biography. From her childhood in segregated Heiberger, Alabama through her college days in Ohio and her classical music studies in Boston, Coretta aspired to be a professional musician. That changed after Martin Luther King Jr persuaded her to marry him, build a family together, and return South to combat Jim Crow. This up-close, graceful narrative offers a vivid depiction of the Kings' lives, especially Coretta's, and the Civil Rights movement.
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Charlotte Bront : a passionate life
by Lyndall Gordon
Searches for the real Charlotte Bronte behind the loneliness, loss, and unrequited love--a strong woman with a fierce belief in herself, creative energy, and powerful ambition, who shaped her life and transformed it into art
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Catherine the Great : Portrait of a Woman
by Robert K. Massie
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Peter the Great presents a reconstruction of the 18th-century empress's life that includes coverage of such topics as her efforts to engage Russia in the cultural life of Europe, her creation of the Hermitage and her numerous scandal-free romantic affairs.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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