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Historical Fiction June 2020
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The Book of Longings : A Novel
by Sue Monk Kidd
Israel, 1st Century: Ana is rebellious and ambitious, a relentless seeker with a brilliant, curious mind and a daring spirit. She yearns for a pursuit worthy of her life, but finds no outlet for her considerable talents. Defying the expectations placed on women, she engages in furtive scholarly pursuits and writes secret narratives about neglected and silenced women. When she meets the eighteen-year-old Jesus, each is drawn to and enriched by the other’s spiritual and philosophical ideas. He becomes a floodgate for her intellect, but also the awakener of her heart.
Grounded in meticulous historical research and written with a reverential approach to Jesus’s life that focuses on his humanity.
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The Book of V. : a Novel
by Anna Solomon
What you'll find: A bold and contemporary investigation into the enduring expectations and restraints placed on women’s lives, and how women's realities have not changed for millennia.
The women: Lily, a modern family woman grappling with sexual and intellectual desires; Vivian, a Watergate-era political wife confronting a life-changing choice; and Esther, an independent-minded young woman who is given as a sacrifice to an ancient Persian king.
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The Jane Austen Society
by Natalie Jenner
Chawton, England, Post WWII: One hundred and fifty years ago, Chawton was the final home of Jane Austen, one of England's finest novelists. Now it's home to a few distant relatives and their diminishing estate. With the last bit of Austen's legacy threatened, a group of disparate individuals come together.
The players: a laborer, a young widow, the local doctor, and a movie star, among others. As each of them endures their own quiet struggle with loss and trauma, they rally together to create the Jane Austen Society, in hopes of preserving both Jane Austen's home and her legacy.
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Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters : a Novel
by Jennifer Chiaverini
May 1875, Illinois: Elizabeth Todd Edwards reels from news that her younger sister Mary, former First Lady and widow of President Abraham Lincoln, has attempted suicide.
What happens: Though discord and tragedy have strained their bonds, maternal Elizabeth, peacemaker Frances, envious Ann, and much adored Emilie, must navigate the consequences of their husbands’ choices to advocate for Mary’s needs.
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African American Experience |
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Everywhere You Don't Belong
by Gabriel Bump
Chicago, Present: Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit: He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
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Homegoing: A Novel
by Yaa Gyasi
Ghana, West Africa and America, 18th century - present: The story of two half-sisters whose fates could not be more different. Effia, becomes the mistress of a British slave-trader, and Esi, who survives the Middle Passage, lives out her days in bondage on an American plantation.
In the centuries that follow: Effia's family experiences the destructive legacies of British imperialism and warfare between the Fante and Asante people, while Esi's descendants live through the Civil War, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement.
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Red at the Bone
by Jacqueline Woodson
Brooklyn, NY, 2001 & 1985: As Melody celebrates a coming of age ceremony at her grandparents’ house, her family remembers when Melody’s own mother prepared for a similar party that never took place.
The history of Melody's parents and grandparents are unfurled to show how they all arrived at this moment, considering not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.
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The Revisioners
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
1924: Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them.
Present: Ava, Josephine's descendant, is a single mother who has just lost her job. She moves in with her white grandmother, Martha, a wealthy but lonely woman, who pays Ava to be her companion. But Martha's behavior soon becomes erratic, then threatening, and Ava must escape before her story and Josephine's converge.
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The Underground Railroad : a Novel
by Colson Whitehead
Georgia, pre-Civil War Era: Cora, is a cotton plantation slave who has suffered at the hands of both her owners and fellow slaves. When she hears about the Underground Railroad she decides to take a terrifying risk and escape, seeking true freedom.
Her odyssey on the Underground Railroad, with a relentless slave-catcher trailing her, is a harrowing state by state flight, chronicling her daring survival.
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The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
Louisiana, 1950s-1990s: Desiree and Stella are identical twins who have grown up poor in a small town. At 16 they run away to New Orleans where their lives change. Separated by their embrace of different racial identities, the two mixed-race women reevaluate their choices; one raises a black daughter in their southern hometown while the other passes for white with a husband who is unaware of her heritage.
Why you'll like it: Over the decades you'll see how the choices of Stella and Desiree affect the people around them...their daughters, the men in their lives, their neighbors, friends, and family.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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