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All That She Carried Book Club Questions: A Comprehensive Guide
Author: Dr. Eleanor Vance, Professor of American Literature and specialist in historical fiction and the representation of trauma. Dr. Vance has published numerous articles and books on the subject, including The Power of Narrative in Trauma Literature.
Publisher: Literary Insights Press, a leading publisher of book club guides and literary analysis focused on enriching discussions and fostering deeper engagement with literature.
Editor: Sarah Chen, experienced editor with a decade of experience in publishing literary criticism and book club resources.
Summary: This guide provides a comprehensive collection of "all that she carried book club questions," categorized by theme and complexity, designed to facilitate engaging and insightful discussions about "All That She Carried: A Memoir" by Ting Chang. It addresses best practices for leading successful book clubs and common pitfalls to avoid, equipping readers with the tools to unlock the rich layers of meaning within the text. The guide also includes frequently asked questions and related article recommendations to enhance the overall learning experience.
Keywords: all that she carried book club questions, All That She Carried discussion questions, Ting Chang book club, memoir book club questions, historical fiction book club, family history book club, intergenerational trauma discussion, immigration book club, Asian American literature book club.
I. Unlocking the Power of "All That She Carried" with Thought-Provoking Questions
Ting Chang's All That She Carried is a poignant and powerful memoir exploring the complexities of family history, intergenerational trauma, and the enduring strength of the human spirit. To fully appreciate its nuances, thoughtful discussion is crucial. This section offers a range of "all that she carried book club questions" designed to stimulate rich conversations.
A. Understanding the Narrative Structure:
1. The book blends personal narrative, historical research, and poetic prose. How does this hybrid structure enhance the storytelling? Does it affect your understanding of the author’s relationship with her grandmother and her inheritance?
2. Chang utilizes the imagery of the “small, square, padded cloth” throughout the book. How does this recurring symbol represent both the physical and emotional legacy passed down through generations?
3. The book jumps between different time periods and perspectives. How effective is this narrative technique in conveying the complexities of family history and trauma?
B. Exploring Themes of Family, Identity, and Immigration:
4. How does Chang portray the relationship between herself and her grandmother? What are the complexities of this intergenerational connection?
5. The book explores the impact of immigration and displacement on families. How does this theme resonate with your own experiences or understanding of immigrant narratives?
6. What are some of the challenges faced by first and second-generation immigrants in preserving their cultural heritage? How does the book illustrate these challenges?
7. Discuss the significance of the author's exploration of her Chinese-American identity. How does this identity shape her understanding of family history and personal narrative?
C. Addressing Trauma and Resilience:
8. The memoir delves into the impacts of war, poverty, and displacement on families. How does Chang portray the resilience of individuals and communities facing adversity?
9. How does the author convey the lasting impact of intergenerational trauma? What are some of the ways in which trauma manifests across generations?
10. How does the act of writing and researching this memoir contribute to the author's healing process and understanding of her family’s history?
11. Discuss the ethical considerations involved in exploring family trauma and secrets. How does Chang balance her personal narrative with the perspectives of her family members?
D. Analyzing Literary Devices and Style:
12. Analyze Chang's use of language and imagery. How does her writing style contribute to the emotional impact of the book?
13. Discuss the role of memory and storytelling in shaping personal and collective identities.
14. Consider the author's use of archival research. How does this historical context enrich the narrative?
15. Discuss the significance of the title, "All That She Carried". What is the full weight of this inheritance, both tangible and intangible?
II. Best Practices and Common Pitfalls for Book Club Discussions
Best Practices:
Create a safe and inclusive space: Encourage respectful dialogue, empathy, and active listening. Acknowledge differing perspectives.
Prepare in advance: Review the book thoroughly and formulate thoughtful questions. Select a few key themes to guide the discussion.
Facilitate, don't dominate: Guide the conversation, but avoid monopolizing the discussion. Encourage everyone to participate.
Use open-ended questions: Avoid questions with simple yes/no answers. Prompt deeper analysis and reflection.
Encourage personal connections: Relate the themes to readers' personal experiences, ensuring sensitivity and respect for individual boundaries.
Common Pitfalls:
Rushing the discussion: Allow ample time for thoughtful responses and meaningful dialogue.
Focusing solely on plot summary: Go beyond plot points to explore the underlying themes, characters, and literary devices.
Interrupting or dominating the conversation: Create a space for everyone to share their perspectives.
Being judgmental or dismissive of others' opinions: Respect the diverse interpretations and experiences of group members.
Ignoring the literary aspects of the text: Analyze the author’s style, use of language, and narrative techniques.
III. Conclusion
Leading a successful book club discussion on All That She Carried requires thoughtful preparation and facilitation. By using the "all that she carried book club questions" provided, and by following the best practices outlined, book clubs can engage in rich and meaningful conversations that deepen their understanding and appreciation of this powerful memoir. The emotional weight and historical depth of the book offer ample opportunities for exploration, offering a framework for discussing critical themes relevant to our modern world.
FAQs
1. What is the central theme of All That She Carried? The central theme is the enduring power of family history and the intergenerational transmission of trauma and resilience, particularly within the context of immigration and cultural identity.
2. Who is the main character in All That She Carried? While the book is a memoir, the primary focus is on the relationship between the author, Ting Chang, and her grandmother, with both their lives and experiences intertwined as the central narrative.
3. What is the significance of the “small, square, padded cloth”? It is a powerful symbol representing the tangible and intangible legacy passed down through generations, encapsulating both physical objects and the emotional weight of family history and trauma.
4. How does the book incorporate historical context? Chang integrates historical research, including archival material, to contextualize her family's experiences within broader historical events and social changes, particularly related to immigration and war.
5. What is the intended audience for All That She Carried? The book appeals to a broad audience interested in memoirs, family history, historical fiction, and explorations of intergenerational trauma, immigration, and cultural identity.
6. What makes All That She Carried unique? Its unique blend of personal narrative, historical research, poetic prose, and powerful imagery creates a deeply moving and insightful exploration of family legacy and the enduring strength of the human spirit.
7. Are there any specific writing styles used in the book that should be discussed? The author skillfully uses poetic language, evocative imagery, and a nonlinear narrative structure to create a multi-layered reading experience.
8. What are some potential discussions regarding the ethical considerations of the book? The exploration of family secrets and traumas raises ethical questions around privacy, consent, and the responsibility of storytelling.
9. What are some connections between All That She Carried and other works of literature or history? The book resonates with other works exploring themes of immigration, intergenerational trauma, and the impact of historical events on families, offering opportunities for comparative analysis.
Related Articles:
1. Exploring Intergenerational Trauma in "All That She Carried": A deeper dive into the specific ways trauma is passed down through generations and its impact on family dynamics.
2. The Power of Symbolism in Ting Chang's Memoir: An analysis of the recurring symbols and their significance in the overall narrative.
3. Historical Context of "All That She Carried": A detailed look at the historical events and social conditions that shaped the author's family history.
4. Comparing "All That She Carried" to Other Immigration Narratives: A comparative study examining how this memoir fits within the larger genre of immigration literature.
5. The Role of Memory and Storytelling in "All That She Carried": Exploring how memory and storytelling shape identity and understanding of the past.
6. Analyzing the Poetic Prose of "All That She Carried": An examination of Chang's unique writing style and its contribution to the emotional impact of the book.
7. Book Club Guide: Facilitating Meaningful Discussions about Trauma: Practical tips and strategies for leading sensitive and productive book club conversations on difficult topics.
8. Understanding Chinese-American Identity in "All That She Carried": A focus on the author's exploration of her cultural identity and its influence on her personal narrative.
9. "All That She Carried": A Critical Analysis: A comprehensive review and critical evaluation of the book, encompassing its strengths, weaknesses, and literary merit.
all that she carried book club questions: All That She Carried Tiya Miles, 2021-06-08 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives. WINNER: Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Harriet Tubman Prize, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize, Lawrence W. Levine Award, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Cundill History Prize, Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, Massachusetts Book Award ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Slate, Vulture, Publishers Weekly “A history told with brilliance and tenderness and fearlessness.”—Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language. Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of the experience of slavery, and the uncertain freedom afterward, in the United States. All That She Carried is a poignant story of resilience and love passed down against steep odds. It honors the creativity and resourcefulness of people who preserved family ties when official systems refused to do so, and it serves as a visionary illustration of how to reconstruct and recount their stories today FINALIST: MAAH Stone Book Award, Kirkus Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, Chatauqua Prize ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, NPR, Time, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Smithsonian Magazine, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, Book Riot, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist |
all that she carried book club questions: When the Men Were Gone Marjorie Herrera Lewis, 2018-10-02 “…Sublimely ties together the drama of high school football, gender politics, and the impact of war on a small town in Texas.” – Sports Illustrated A 2019 One of the Best Books So Far--Newsweek.com A cross between Friday Night Lights and The Atomic City Girls, When The Men Were Gone is a debut historical novel based on the true story of Tylene Wilson, a woman in 1940's Texas who, in spite of extreme opposition, became a female football coach in order to keep her students from heading off to war. Football is the heartbeat of Brownwood, Texas. Every Friday night for as long as assistant principal Tylene Wilson can remember, the entire town has gathered in the stands, cheering their boys on. Each September brings with it the hope of a good season and a sense of unity and optimism. Now, the war has changed everything. Most of the Brownwood men over 18 and under 45 are off fighting, and in a small town the possibilities are limited. Could this mean a season without football? But no one counted on Tylene, who learned the game at her daddy’s knee. She knows more about it than most men, so she does the unthinkable, convincing the school to let her take on the job of coach. Faced with extreme opposition—by the press, the community, rival coaches, and referees and even the players themselves—Tylene remains resolute. And when her boys rally around her, she leads the team—and the town—to a Friday night and a subsequent season they will never forget. Based on a true story, When the Men Were Gone is a powerful and vibrant novel of perseverance and personal courage. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Island of Sea Women Lisa See, 2019-03-05 THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A mesmerizing new historical novel” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls living on the Korean island of Jeju, are best friends who come from very different backgrounds. When they are old enough, they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective, led by Young-sook’s mother. As the girls take up their positions as baby divers, they know they are beginning a life of excitement and responsibility—but also danger. Despite their love for each other, Mi-ja and Young-sook find it impossible to ignore their differences. The Island of Sea Women takes place over many decades, beginning during a period of Japanese colonialism in the 1930s and 1940s, followed by World War II, the Korean War, through the era of cell phones and wet suits for the women divers. Throughout this time, the residents of Jeju find themselves caught between warring empires. Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator. Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers in their village. Little do the two friends know that forces outside their control will push their friendship to the breaking point. “This vivid…thoughtful and empathetic” novel (The New York Times Book Review) illuminates a world turned upside down, one where the women are in charge and the men take care of the children. “A wonderful ode to a truly singular group of women” (Publishers Weekly), The Island of Sea Women is a “beautiful story…about the endurance of friendship when it’s pushed to its limits, and you…will love it” (Cosmopolitan). |
all that she carried book club questions: The Guest Book Sarah Blake, 2019-05-07 Instant New York Times Bestseller Longlisted for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence 2020 New England Society Book Award Winner for Fiction “The Guest Book is monumental in a way that few novels dare attempt.” —The Washington Post The thought-provoking new novel by New York Times bestselling author Sarah Blake An exquisitely written, poignant family saga that illuminates the great divide, the gulf that separates the rich and poor, black and white, Protestant and Jew. Spanning three generations, The Guest Book deftly examines the life and legacy of one unforgettable family as they navigate the evolving social and political landscape from Crockett’s Island, their family retreat off the coast of Maine. Blake masterfully lays bare the memories and mistakes each generation makes while coming to terms with what it means to inherit the past. |
all that she carried book club questions: Loving Frank Nancy Horan, 2007-08-07 I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives. In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion. Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Nancy Horan's Under the Wide and Starry Sky. Advance praise for Loving Frank: “Loving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. It’s mesmerizing and fascinating–filled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years ago–all gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.” –Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light “This graceful, assured first novel tells the remarkable story of the long-lived affair between Frank Lloyd Wright, a passionate and impossible figure, and Mamah Cheney, a married woman whom Wright beguiled and led beyond the restraint of convention. It is engrossing, provocative reading.” ——Scott Turow “It takes great courage to write a novel about historical people, and in particular to give voice to someone as mythic as Frank Lloyd Wright. This beautifully written novel about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.” ——Jane Hamilton “I admire this novel, adore this novel, for so many reasons: The intelligence and lyricism of the prose. The attention to period detail. The epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head and heart and soul since reading this book; I doubt she’ ll ever leave.” –Elizabeth Berg |
all that she carried book club questions: The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien, 2009-10-13 A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. |
all that she carried book club questions: Carried Away Alice Munro, 2006-09-26 WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013 Carried Away is a dazzling selection of stories–seventeen favorites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. With an Introduction by Margaret Atwood. Alice Munro has been repeatedly hailed as one of our greatest living writers, a reputation that has been growing for years. The stories brought together here span a quarter century, drawn from some of her earliest books, The Beggar Maid and The Moons of Jupiter, through her recent best-selling collection, Runaway. Here are such favorites as “Royal Beatings” in which a young girl, her father, and stepmother release the tension of their circumstances in a ritual of punishment and reconciliation; “Friend of My Youth” in which a woman comes to understand that her difficult mother is not so very different from herself; and “The Albanian Virgin, a romantic tale of capture and escape in Central Europe that may or may not be true but that nevertheless comforts the hearer, who is on a desperate adventure of her own. Munro’s incomparable empathy for her characters, the depth of her understanding of human nature, and the grace and surprise of her narrative add up to a richly layered and capacious fiction. Like the World War I soldier in the title story, whose letters from the front to a small-town librarian he doesn’t know change her life forever, Munro’s unassuming characters insinuate themselves in our hearts and take permanent hold. |
all that she carried book club questions: A Collar in My Pocket Jane Elliott, 2016-08-03 Jane Elliott is an educator who began her career in a third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa, and over the past fifty years has become an educator of people of all ages all over the U.S. and abroad.The Blue-eyed, Brown-eyed Exercise which she devised to help her students to understand Martin Luther King, Jr.'s work, has been cited and studied by psychologists and sociologists all over the world. Elliott lives in a remodeled schoolhouse twenty-one miles from where she was born. She remains stedfast in her belief that there is only one race, THE HUMAN RACE, of which we are all members. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Four Winds Kristin Hannah, 2021-02-02 The Bestselling Hardcover Novel of the Year.--Publishers Weekly From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them. “My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.” Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows. By 1934, the world has changed; millions are out of work and drought has devastated the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as crops fail and water dries up and the earth cracks open. Dust storms roll relentlessly across the plains. Everything on the Martinelli farm is dying, including Elsa’s tenuous marriage; each day is a desperate battle against nature and a fight to keep her children alive. In this uncertain and perilous time, Elsa—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or leave it behind and go west, to California, in search of a better life for her family. The Four Winds is a rich, sweeping novel that stunningly brings to life the Great Depression and the people who lived through it—the harsh realities that divided us as a nation and the enduring battle between the haves and the have-nots. A testament to hope, resilience, and the strength of the human spirit to survive adversity, The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Fisherman John Langan, 2023-10-09 ‘Illusory, frightening, and deeply moving, The Fisherman is a modern horror epic. And it’s simply a must read’ Paul Tremblay In upstate New York, within the woods, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked and fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss them. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it. ‘An epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs Through It... straight to hell’ Laird Barron More praise for The Fisherman ‘Reading this, your mouth fills with worms. Just let them wriggle and crawl as they will, though—don’t swallow. John Langan is fishing for your sleep, for your soul. I fear he’s already got mine’ Stephen Graham Jones ‘What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you head first into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you’ll never forget, and the memory of what you saw will change you forever’ Richard Kadrey ‘The Fisherman is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can’t say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last’ Victor LaValle ‘Stories within stories, folk tales becoming modern legends, all spinning into a fisherman’s tale about the one he wishes had gotten away. Langan’s latest is at turns epic and personal, dense yet compulsively readable, frightening but endearing’ Adam Cesare |
all that she carried book club questions: The Year We Left Home Jean Thompson, 2012-02-07 A New York Times bestseller and a National Book Award finalist, The Year We Left Home chronicles the lives of the Erickson family as the children come of age in 1970's and '80's America. |
all that she carried book club questions: Verity Colleen Hoover, 2021-10-05 Whose truth is the lie? Stay up all night reading the sensational psychological thriller that has readers obsessed, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Too Late and It Ends With Us. #1 New York Times Bestseller · USA Today Bestseller · Globe and Mail Bestseller · Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity’s notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn’t expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read. Page after page of bone-chilling admissions, including Verity's recollection of the night her family was forever altered. Lowen decides to keep the manuscript hidden from Jeremy, knowing its contents could devastate the already grieving father. But as Lowen’s feelings for Jeremy begin to intensify, she recognizes all the ways she could benefit if he were to read his wife’s words. After all, no matter how devoted Jeremy is to his injured wife, a truth this horrifying would make it impossible for him to continue loving her. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Sweetness of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Nathan Harris, 2022-05-03 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER / AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Longlisted for the 2022 Carnegie Medal for Excellence Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize In the spirit of The Known World and The Underground Railroad, a miraculous debut (Washington Post) and a towering achievement of imagination (CBS This Morning)about the unlikely bond between two freedmen who are brothers and the Georgia farmer whose alliance will alter their lives, and his, forever--from a storyteller with bountiful insight and assurance (Kirkus) A Best Book of the Year: Oprah Daily, NPR, Washington Post, Time, Boston Globe, Smithsonian, Chicago Public Library, BookBrowse, and the Oregonian A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A July Indie Next Pick In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry--freed by the Emancipation Proclamation--seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother, who was sold away when they were boys. Parallel to their story runs a forbidden romance between two Confederate soldiers. The young men, recently returned from the war to the town of Old Ox, hold their trysts in the woods. But when their secret is discovered, the resulting chaos, including a murder, unleashes convulsive repercussions on the entire community. In the aftermath of so much turmoil, it is Isabelle who emerges as an unlikely leader, proffering a healing vision for the land and for the newly free citizens of Old Ox. With candor and sympathy, debut novelist Nathan Harris creates an unforgettable cast of characters, depicting Georgia in the violent crucible of Reconstruction. Equal parts beauty and terror, as gripping as it is moving, The Sweetness of Water is an epic whose grandeur locates humanity and love amid the most harrowing circumstances. |
all that she carried book club questions: Such a Fun Age Kiley Reid, 2021-04-20 A Best Book of the Year: The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • NPR • Vogue • Elle • Real Simple • InStyle • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Slate • Vox • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal • BookPage Longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize An Instant New York Times Bestseller A Reese's Book Club Pick The most provocative page-turner of the year. --Entertainment Weekly I urge you to read Such a Fun Age. --NPR A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times. |
all that she carried book club questions: Lean Fall Stand Jon Mcgregor, 2021-09-21 A thrilling and propulsive novel of an Antarctica expedition gone wrong and its far-reaching consequences for the explorers and their families leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story (Hilary Mantel). Remember the training: find shelter or make shelter, remain in place, establish contact with other members of the party, keep moving, keep calm. Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there on the ice when the worst happened. He holds within him the complete story of that night—but depleted by the disaster, Wright is no longer able to communicate the truth. Instead, in the wake of the catastrophic expedition, he faces the most daunting adventure of his life: learning a whole new way to be in the world. Meanwhile Anna, his wife, must suddenly scramble to navigate the sharp and unexpected contours of life as a caregiver. From the Booker Prize-longlisted, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning author of Reservoir 13, this is a novel every bit as mesmerizing as its setting. Tenderly unraveling different notions of heroism through the rippling effects of one extraordinary expedition on an ordinary family, Lean Fall Stand explores the indomitable human impulse to turn our experiences into stories—even when the words may fail us. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Calligrapher Edward Docx, 2003 This fresh, original, altogether winning first novel is centered on a young London calligrapher named Jasper--an engaging, intelligent serial seducer and a breaker of hearts. |
all that she carried book club questions: All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr, 2014-05-06 *NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). |
all that she carried book club questions: The Double Bind Chris Bohjalian, 2008-02-12 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Flight Attendant, here is a gripping psychological novel of obsession and consequence. When Laurel Estabrook is attacked while riding her bicycle through Vermont’s back roads, her life is forever changed. Formerly outgoing, Laurel withdraws into her photography, spending all her free time at a homeless shelter. There she meets Bobbie Crocker, a man with a history of mental illness and a box of photographs that he won’t let anyone see. When Bobbie dies, Laurel discovers a deeply hidden secret–a story that leads her far from her old life, and into a cat-and-mouse game with pursuers who claim they want to save her. In a tale that travels between the Roaring Twenties and the twenty-first century, between Jay Gatsby’s Long Island and rural New England, bestselling author Chris Bohjalian has written an extraordinary novel. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness! |
all that she carried book club questions: The Bite of the Mango Mariatu Kamara, 2008-09-12 As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown. As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and Mariatu’s eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Girl in His Shadow Audrey Blake, 2021-05-04 THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER! An exquisitely detailed journey through the harrowing field of medicine in mid-19th century London.—Tracey Enerson Wood, USA Today bestselling author of The Engineer's Wife and The War Nurse An unforgettable historical fiction novel about one woman who believed in scientific medicine before the world believed in her. London, 1845: Raised by the eccentric surgeon Dr. Horace Croft after losing her parents to a deadly pandemic, the orphan Nora Beady knows little about conventional life. While other young ladies were raised to busy themselves with needlework and watercolors, Nora was trained to perfect her suturing and anatomical illustrations of dissections. Women face dire consequences if caught practicing medicine, but in Croft's private clinic Nora is his most trusted—and secret—assistant. That is until the new surgical resident Dr. Daniel Gibson arrives. Dr. Gibson has no idea that Horace's bright and quiet young ward is a surgeon more qualified and ingenuitive than even himself. In order to protect Dr. Croft and his practice from scandal and collapse Nora must learn to play a new and uncomfortable role—that of a proper young lady. But pretense has its limits. Nora cannot turn away and ignore the suffering of patients, even if it means giving Gibson the power to ruin everything she's worked for. And when she makes a discovery that could change the field forever, Nora faces an impossible choice. Remain invisible and let the men around her take credit for her work, or step into the light—even if it means being destroyed by her own legacy. Fans of The Other Einstein and The Paris Library will relish this riveting and empowering story about one woman's fight to follow her dreams and build a life—and legacy—beyond what is expected of her. Praise for The Girl in His Shadow: A suspenseful story of a courageous young woman determined to become a surgeon in repressive Victorian England. Fluidly written, impeccably researched, The Girl in His Shadow is a memorable literary gift to be read, reread, and treasured.—Gloria Goldreich, author of The Paris Children Other Bestselling Historical Fiction from Sourcebooks Landmark: The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris |
all that she carried book club questions: The Daughters of Yalta Catherine Grace Katz, 2020 The untold story of the three intelligent and glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, and of the conference's fateful reverberations in the waning days of World War II. |
all that she carried book club questions: A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara, 2016-01-26 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise. |
all that she carried book club questions: Long Way Down Jason Reynolds, 2017-10-24 “An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds. |
all that she carried book club questions: Klara and the Sun Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021-03-02 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Once in a great while, a book comes along that changes our view of the world. This magnificent novel from the Nobel laureate and author of Never Let Me Go is “an intriguing take on how artificial intelligence might play a role in our futures ... a poignant meditation on love and loneliness” (The Associated Press). • A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick! Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love? |
all that she carried book club questions: Sparrow Hill Road Seanan McGuire, 2014-05-06 Rose Marshall died in 1952 in Buckley Township, Michigan, run off the road by a man named Bobby Cross—a man who had sold his soul to live forever, and intended to use her death to pay the price of his immortality. Trouble was, he didn’t ask Rose what she thought of the idea. It’s been more than sixty years since that night, and she’s still sixteen, and she’s still running. They have names for her all over the country: the Girl in the Diner. The Phantom Prom Date. The Girl in the Green Silk Gown. Mostly she just goes by “Rose,” a hitchhiking ghost girl with her thumb out and her eyes fixed on the horizon, trying to outrace a man who never sleeps, never stops, and never gives up on the idea of claiming what’s his. She’s the angel of the overpass, she’s the darling of the truck stops, and she’s going to figure out a way to win her freedom. After all, it’s not like it can kill her. You can’t kill what’s already dead. |
all that she carried book club questions: A Long Way Home Connie Briscoe, 1999-07-07 From Connie Briscoe, the New York Times bestselling author of Sisters & Lovers and Big Girls Don't Cry, comes a lyrical and moving tour de force that is her most daringly ambitious novel to date--a multigenerational story of slavery freedom, and the indestructible bonds of love and family witnessed through the lives of three unforgettable African-American women. Shimmering with heartache and hope, A Long Way from Home recounts the joys, pain, and ultimate triumph of three generations: Susie; her daughter, Clara; and her granddaughter, Susan. Born and reared as house slaves on Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of President James Madison and his wife, Dolley Madison, they are united by love, by a fierce devotion to each other and their fellow slaves, and by a growing desire for freedom--a dream that will finally come to fruition for Susan at the end of the Civil War. This hauntingly beautiful novel opens in the peaceful Piedmont area of Virginia. Trained as a house slave since childhood, Susie enjoys the privileges that her position as maid to Miss Dolley provides her and Clara. For Susie life holds no mystery, no promise beyond the boundaries of the plantation itself--a lesson she tries to impart to the dreamy Clara, who longs to control her own destiny despite her mother's frightening admonition: You don't know a thing about freedom, 'cause I don't know anything about it. It takes money and know-how to live free. You don't just up and do it. Life will change for both mother and daughter, though, with the death of James Madison and the departure of his wife for her town house, events that leave the estate in the hands of Dolley's profligate son, Todd. As a result of his neglectful stewardship, the plantation soon falls to a series of owners, each posing a new threat to Susie and Clara, and the other longtime Madison slaves with whom the two women have shared their entire lives. Amidst these devastating changes, Clara grows into womanhood and becomes a mother herself, giving birth to two light-skinned daughters, Ellen and Susan. Yet the threat of separation that has shaped her life is soon a reality when her younger daughter, Susan, is sold to a wealthy businessman in Richmond. Susan must create a new life for herself in this bustling city, a life that will be filled with both terror and hope . And it is in Civil War-torn Richmond that she will find love and realize the long-held dream of her ancestors: freedom. In A Long Way from Home, Connie Briscoe vividly recreates Southern life and the ambivalent, shifting relationships on both sides of the color divide, from the cruelty and insidious benevolence of white owners to the deep yearnings and complex emotions of the slaves themselves. This poignant, powerful story pays homage to the African-American experience and to the ancestors, both black and white, whose lives and histories are indelibly entwined with our own. |
all that she carried book club questions: The Sun Is a Compass Caroline Van Hemert, 2019-03-19 For fans of Cheryl Strayed, the gripping story of a biologist's human-powered journey from the Pacific Northwest to the Arctic to rediscover her love of birds, nature, and adventure. During graduate school, as she conducted experiments on the peculiarly misshapen beaks of chickadees, ornithologist Caroline Van Hemert began to feel stifled in the isolated, sterile environment of the lab. Worried that she was losing her passion for the scientific research she once loved, she was compelled to experience wildness again, to be guided by the sounds of birds and to follow the trails of animals. In March of 2012, she and her husband set off on a 4,000-mile wilderness journey from the Pacific rainforest to the Alaskan Arctic, traveling by rowboat, ski, foot, raft, and canoe. Together, they survived harrowing dangers while also experiencing incredible moments of joy and grace -- migrating birds silhouetted against the moon, the steamy breath of caribou, and the bond that comes from sharing such experiences. A unique blend of science, adventure, and personal narrative, The Sun is a Compass explores the bounds of the physical body and the tenuousness of life in the company of the creatures who make their homes in the wildest places left in North America. Inspiring and beautifully written, this love letter to nature is a lyrical testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Competition: Adventure Travel |
all that she carried book club questions: The Prophets Robert Jones, Jr., 2021-01-05 Best Book of the Year NPR • The Washington Post • Boston Globe • TIME • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Real Simple • Parade • Buzzfeed • Electric Literature • LitHub • BookRiot • PopSugar • Goop • Library Journal • BookBub • KCRW • Finalist for the National Book Award • One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year • One of the New York Times Best Historical Fiction of the Year • Instant New York Times Bestseller A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man—a fellow slave—seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony. With a lyricism reminiscent of Toni Morrison, Robert Jones, Jr., fiercely summons the voices of slaver and enslaved alike, from Isaiah and Samuel to the calculating slave master to the long line of women that surround them, women who have carried the soul of the plantation on their shoulders. As tensions build and the weight of centuries—of ancestors and future generations to come—culminates in a climactic reckoning, The Prophets fearlessly reveals the pain and suffering of inheritance, but is also shot through with hope, beauty, and truth, portraying the enormous, heroic power of love. |
all that she carried book club questions: Come Fly the World Julia Cooke, 2021 A lively, unexpected portrait of the jet-age stewardesses serving on iconic Pan Am airways between 1966 and 1975-- |
all that she carried book club questions: The Moonlight School Suzanne Woods Fisher, 2021-02-02 Haunted by her sister's mysterious disappearance, Lucy Wilson arrives in Rowan County, Kentucky, in the spring of 1911 to work for Cora Wilson Stewart, superintendent of education. When Cora sends Lucy into the hills to act as scribe for the mountain people, she is repelled by the primitive conditions and intellectual poverty she encounters. Few adults can read and write. Born in those hills, Cora knows the plague of illiteracy. So does Brother Wyatt, a singing schoolmaster who travels through the hills. Involving Lucy and Wyatt, Cora hatches a plan to open the schoolhouses to adults on moonlit nights. The best way to combat poverty, she believes, is to eliminate illiteracy. But will the people come? As Lucy emerges from a life in the shadows, she finds purpose; or maybe purpose finds her. With purpose comes answers to her questions, and something else she hadn't expected: love. Inspired by the true events of the Moonlight Schools, this standalone novel from bestselling author Suzanne Woods Fisher brings to life the story that shocked the nation into taking adult literacy seriously. You'll finish the last page of this enthralling story with deep gratitude for the gift of reading. |
all that she carried book club questions: Beyond Magenta Susan Kuklin, 2014 Shares insights into the teen transgender experience, tracing six individual's emotional and physical journey as it was shaped by family dynamics, living situations, and the transition each teen made during the personal journey. |
all that she carried book club questions: Lucky Broken Girl Ruth Behar, 2017-04-11 Winner of the 2018 Pura Belpre Award! “A book for anyone mending from childhood wounds.”—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street In this unforgettable multicultural coming-of-age narrative—based on the author’s childhood in the 1960s—a young Cuban-Jewish immigrant girl is adjusting to her new life in New York City when her American dream is suddenly derailed. Ruthie’s plight will intrigue readers, and her powerful story of strength and resilience, full of color, light, and poignancy, will stay with them for a long time. Ruthie Mizrahi and her family recently emigrated from Castro’s Cuba to New York City. Just when she’s finally beginning to gain confidence in her mastery of English—and enjoying her reign as her neighborhood’s hopscotch queen—a horrific car accident leaves her in a body cast and confined her to her bed for a long recovery. As Ruthie’s world shrinks because of her inability to move, her powers of observation and her heart grow larger and she comes to understand how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are as human beings, and how friends, neighbors, and the power of the arts can sweeten even the worst of times. |
all that she carried book club questions: Perfect Rachel Joyce, 2014-01-14 A spellbinding novel that will resonate with readers of Mark Haddon, Louise Erdrich, and John Irving, Perfect tells the story of a young boy who is thrown into the murky, difficult realities of the adult world with far-reaching consequences. Byron Hemmings wakes to a morning that looks like any other: his school uniform draped over his wooden desk chair, his sister arguing over the breakfast cereal, the click of his mother’s heels as she crosses the kitchen. But when the three of them leave home, driving into a dense summer fog, the morning takes an unmistakable turn. In one terrible moment, something happens, something completely unexpected and at odds with life as Byron understands it. While his mother seems not to have noticed, eleven-year-old Byron understands that from now on nothing can be the same. What happened and who is to blame? Over the days and weeks that follow, Byron’s perfect world is shattered. Unable to trust his parents, he confides in his best friend, James, and together they concoct a plan. . . . As she did in her debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce has imagined bewitching characters who find their ordinary lives unexpectedly thrown into chaos, who learn that there are times when children must become parents to their parents, and who discover that in confronting the hard truths about their pasts, they will forge unexpected relationships that have profound and surprising impacts. Brimming with love, forgiveness, and redemption, Perfect will cement Rachel Joyce’s reputation as one of fiction’s brightest talents. Praise for Perfect “Touching, eccentric . . . Joyce does an inviting job of setting up these mysterious circumstances, and of drawing Byron’s magical closeness with Diana.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Haunting . . . compelling.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune “[Joyce] triumphantly returns with Perfect. . . . As Joyce probes the souls of Diana, Byron and Jim, she reveals—slowly and deliberately, as if peeling back a delicate onion skin—the connection between the two stories, creating a poignant, searching tale.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “Perfect touches on class, mental illness, and the ways a psyche is formed or broken. It has the tenor of a horror film, and yet at the end, in some kind of contortionist trick, the narrative unfolds into an unexpected burst of redemption. [Verdict:] Buy It.”—New York “Joyce’s dark, quiet follow-up to her successful debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, could easily become a book club favorite. . . . Perfect is the kind of book that blossoms under thoughtful examination, its slow tendencies redeemed by moments of loveliness and insight. However sad, Joyce’s messages—about the limitations of time and control, the failures of adults and the fears of children, and our responsibility for our own imprisonment and freedom—have a gentle ring of truth to them.”—The Washington Post “There is a poignancy to Joyce’s narrative that makes for her most memorable writing.”—NPR’s All Things Considered |
all that she carried book club questions: The Book of Lost Friends Lisa Wingate, 2020-04-07 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of Before We Were Yours comes a dramatic historical novel of three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post–Civil War South, and of a modern-day teacher who learns of their story and its vital connection to her students’ lives. “An absorbing historical . . . enthralling.”—Library Journal Bestselling author Lisa Wingate brings to life startling stories from actual “Lost Friends” advertisements that appeared in Southern newspapers after the Civil War, as newly freed slaves desperately searched for loved ones who had been sold away. Louisiana, 1875: In the tumultuous era of Reconstruction, three young women set off as unwilling companions on a perilous quest: Hannie, a freed slave; Lavinia, the pampered heir to a now destitute plantation; and Juneau Jane, Lavinia’s Creole half sister. Each carries private wounds and powerful secrets as they head for Texas, following roads rife with vigilantes and soldiers still fighting a war lost a decade before. For Lavinia and Juneau Jane, the journey is one of stolen inheritance and financial desperation, but for Hannie, torn from her mother and siblings before slavery’s end, the pilgrimage west reignites an agonizing question: Could her long-lost family still be out there? Beyond the swamps lie the limitless frontiers of Texas and, improbably, hope. Louisiana, 1987: For first-year teacher Benedetta Silva, a subsidized job at a poor rural school seems like the ticket to canceling her hefty student debt—until she lands in a tiny, out-of-step Mississippi River town. Augustine, Louisiana, is suspicious of new ideas and new people, and Benny can scarcely comprehend the lives of her poverty-stricken students. But amid the gnarled live oaks and run-down plantation homes lie the century-old history of three young women, a long-ago journey, and a hidden book that could change everything. |
all that she carried book club questions: Good Luck with That Kristan Higgins, 2018-08-07 One of Purewow’s “Best Beach Reads of Summer 2018” Winner for Best Book of 2018 of the Fresh Fiction Awards! New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins is beloved for her heartfelt novels filled with humor and wisdom. Now, she tackles an issue every woman deals with: body image and self-acceptance. Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson's dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves. A novel of compassion and insight, Good Luck With That tells the story of two women who learn to embrace themselves just the way they are. |
all that she carried book club questions: While We Were Watching Downton Abbey Wendy Wax, 2013-04-02 From the bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding comes a novel about four friends who share a passion for a beloved British television show that will change all of their lives. When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other... Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money—for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal. Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all. And then there’s Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She’s just starting to realize that it’s time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be. For Samantha, Claire, Brooke—and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings—it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life’s hardest moments—all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey. |
all that she carried book club questions: Dreams of Joy Lisa See, 2011-05-31 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Astonishing . . . one of those hard-to-put-down-until-four-in-the morning books . . . a story with characters who enter a reader’s life, take up residence, and illuminate the myriad decisions and stories that make up human history.”—Los Angeles Times In her most powerful novel yet, acclaimed author Lisa See returns to the story of sisters Pearl and May from Shanghai Girls, and Pearl’s strong-willed nineteen-year-old daughter, Joy. Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the Communist regime. Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives. BONUS: This edition contains a Dreams of Joy discussion guide. Praise for Dreams of Joy “[Lisa] See is a gifted historical novelist. . . . The real love story, the one that’s artfully shown, is between mother and daughter, and aunt and daughter, as both of the women who had a part in making Joy return to China come to her rescue. . . . [In Dreams of Joy,] there are no clear heroes or villains, just people who often take wrong turns to their own detriment but for the good of the story, leading to greater strength of character and more durable relationships.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A heartwarming story of heroic love between a mother and daughter . . . No writer has better captured the voice and heart of Chinese culture.”—Bookreporter “Once again, See’s research feels impeccable, and she has created an authentic, visually arresting world.”—The Washington Post |
all that she carried book club questions: The Last Midwife Sandra Dallas, 2015-09-29 With Sandra Dallas's incomparable gift for creating a sense of time and place and characters that capture your heart, The Last Midwife tells the story of family, community, and the secrets that can destroy and unite them. It is 1880 and Gracy Brookens is the only midwife in a small Colorado mining town where she has delivered hundreds, maybe thousands, of babies in her lifetime. The women of Swandyke trust and depend on Gracy, and most couldn't imagine getting through pregnancy and labor without her by their sides. But everything changes when a baby is found dead...and the evidence points to Gracy as the murderer. She didn't commit the crime, but clearing her name isn't so easy when her innocence is not quite as simple, either. She knows things, and that's dangerous. Invited into her neighbors' homes during their most intimate and vulnerable times, she can't help what she sees and hears. A woman sometimes says things in the birthing bed, when life and death seem suspended within the same moment. Gracy has always tucked those revelations away, even the confessions that have cast shadows on her heart. With her friends taking sides and a trial looming, Gracy must decide whether it's worth risking everything to prove her innocence. And she knows that her years of discretion may simply demand too high a price now...especially since she's been keeping more than a few dark secrets of her own. |
all that she carried book club questions: Before and After Judy Christie, Lisa Wingate, 2019-10-22 The compelling, poignant true stories of victims of a notorious adoption scandal—some of whom learned the truth from Lisa Wingate’s bestselling novel Before We Were Yours and were reunited with birth family members as a result of its wide reach From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a black-market baby business at the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents—hiding the fact that many weren’t orphans at all, but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers, and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The publication of Lisa Wingate’s novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann’s lucrative career in child trafficking. Adoptees who knew little about their pasts gained insight into the startling facts behind their family histories. Encouraged by their contact with Wingate and award-winning journalist Judy Christie, who documented the stories of fifteen adoptees in this book, many determined Tann survivors set out to trace their roots and find their birth families. Before and After includes moving and sometimes shocking accounts of the ways in which adoptees were separated from their first families. Often raised as only children, many have joyfully reunited with siblings in the final decades of their lives. Christie and Wingate tell of first meetings that are all the sweeter and more intense for time missed and of families from very different social backgrounds reaching out to embrace better-late-than-never brothers, sisters, and cousins. In a poignant culmination of art meeting life, many of the long-silent victims of the tragically corrupt system return to Memphis with the authors to reclaim their stories at a Tennessee Children’s Home Society reunion . . . with extraordinary results. Advance praise for Before and After “In Before and After, authors Judy Christie and Lisa Wingate tackle the true stories behind Wingate’s blockbuster Before We Were Yours, of the orphans who survived the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. With a journalist’s keen eye and a novelist’s elegant prose, Christie and Wingate weave together the stories that inspired Before We Were Yours with the lives that were changed as a result of reading the novel. Readers will be educated, enlightened, and enraptured by this important and flawlessly executed book.”—Pam Jenoff, author of The Orphan’s Tale and The Lost Girls of Paris |
all that she carried book club questions: Window Shopping Tessa Bailey, 2022-01-25 Two weeks before Christmas and all through Manhattan, shop windows are decorated in red and green satin. I'm standing alone in front of the famous Vivant department store, when a charming man named Aiden asks my opinion of the décor. It's a tragedy in tinsel, I say, unable to lie. He asks for a better idea with a twinkle in his eye. Did I know he owned the place? No. He put me on the spot. Now I'm working for that man, trying to ignore that he's hot. But as a down on her luck girl with a difficult past, I know an opportunity when I see one - and I have to make it last. I'll put my heart and soul into dressing his holiday windows. I'll work without stopping. And when we lose the battle with temptation, I'll try and remember I'm just window shopping--back cover. |
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