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Historical Fiction May 2020
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| Conjure Women by Afia AtakoraWhat it's about: The pre-and-post-slavery life of Rue, a midwife and healer who learned everything she knows from her late mother May Belle, a "conjure woman" whose skill set also included laying curses on their cruel master.
After the war...the recently emancipated people stay on the grounds of the old plantation, building a new community in the shadow of their former master's burned-out house. When the birth of strange-looking baby precedes an epidemic that Rue can't stop, a traveling preacher condemns her as a witch. |
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| The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế MaiWhat it is: the sweeping and lyrical multigenerational saga of one family in Vietnam, from the height of the French colonial era to the late 1970s.
Narrated by: Diệu Lan, who lost her life of privilege in the 1930s, weathered the Japanese occupation in the 1940s, and made difficult choices during the famine of the 1950s; Diệu Lan's granddaughter Huong, who develops her survival skills amidst the tumultuous and traumatic years of the American War. |
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Run Me to Earth
by Paul Yoon
What it's about: As the war in Vietnam spills over the border into Laos, three orphaned teenagers bond with each other and with the French-educated doctor they help scavenge for supplies. After the doctor finds a way for them to escape the country, a freak accident will radically alter the fate of this makeshift family forever.
Read it for: the spare, elegant writing and the haunting settings, such as the beautiful yet decrepit colonial mansion-turned-hospital that brings the characters together.
Did you know? During the Vietnam War, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Laos than were used in World War II against Japan and Germany combined.
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| How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam ZhangWhat it is: a dramatic and compelling debut novel that follows two immigrant siblings as they search for a home in a Wild West where Chinese and American mythology meet.
All that glitters: Twelve-year-old Lucy and 11-year-old Sam are orphaned after the death of their miner father. Forced to leave the racist mining town they grew up in, the children set off into the hills with a stolen horse to find a way in the world. |
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Pandemic Fiction - also available in hoopla and Overdrive |
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Love in the time of cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez
Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years
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Year of wonders : a novel of the plague
by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England. A first novel. 75,000 first printing.
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The Old Drift
by Namwali Serpell
What it is: a sweeping family saga that interweaves the history of colonial Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) with the complex web of connections between generations of three different families -- one English, one Italian, and one African.
For fans of: Isabel Allende's classic debut novel The House of the Spirits, which similarly blends post-colonial history with magical realism as it follows the generations of interconnected families.
Reviewers say: The Old Drift is a novel with a "generous spirit, sensory richness, and visionary heft" that set it apart from other family epics (Publishers Weekly).
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As bright as heaven
by Susan Meissner
The award-winning author of Secrets of a Charmed Life and A Bridge Across the Ocean presents a tale set in 1918 Philadelphia during the Spanish flu epidemic and traces the experiences of a family reeling from the losses of loved ones and changes in their adopted city, a situation that is further shaped by their decision to take in an orphaned infant.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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