Book Club

Discussion Date: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 via Zoom.
In this love story of impossible odds, award-winning writer Tim Z. Hernandez weaves a rich and visionary portrait of Bea Franco, the real woman behind famed American author Jack Kerouac's “The Mexican Girl.” Inspired by Franco’s love letters to Kerouac and Hernandez’s interviews with Franco, now in her nineties and living in relative obscurity, the novel brings this lost gem of a story out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 via Zoom.
Along the lonely western shores of Iceland, among its vast mountain ranges and its barren lava fields, this sublime collection of short stories blends the desires and efforts of its numerous protagonists, nearly all intent on taking leave of their normal lives in order to pursue their dreams more seriously.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2020 via Zoom.
This book presents twelve amazing and often heart-wrenching stories of American women in the frontlines including America's first female pilot to be shot down and survive, the US military's first black female combat pilot, a 21-year-old turret gunner defending a convoy, two military policewomen in a firefight, a nurse struggling to save lives, including her own and more.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2020.
Whitehead dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers. Booklist Editors' Choice 2019; Kirkus Prize winner 2019; New York Times Notable Books; National Book Award nominee; Publishers Weekly Best Books 2019; Library Journal Best Books 2019.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, January 21, 2020.
In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a haunting, visionary memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo was named US Poet Laureate in June 2019.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, December 3, 2019.
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line. Named a Top 10 Book of 2018 by NPR, and the Washington Post; Publishers Weekly Best Books 2018; Amazon Best Books of 2018; Library Journal Best Books 2018.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, October 15, 2019.
Winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, and the Pura Belpré Award! This novel-in-verse by an award-winning slam poet is about an Afro-Latina heroine who tells her story with blazing words and powerful truth. Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, September 10, 2019.
In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. New York Times Bestseller.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2019.
"In Urrea's exuberant new novel of Mexican-American life, 70-year-old patriarch Big Angel de la Cruz is dying, and he wants to have one last birthday blowout. Unfortunately, his 100-year-old mother, America, dies the week of his party, so funeral and birthday are celebrated one day apart." American Library Association Notable Books; New York Times Notable Books; YBP Core Collection 2018; Kirkus Best Books of 2018.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, July 9, 2019.
A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alley. A Recommended Book of 2019 from: Entertainment Weekly; O, The Oprah Magazine; Southern Living; BBC; Huffington Post; Lit Hub; Kirkus; Bustle; Publishers Weekly; BookRiot; Popsugar; Bookish; The Boston Globe; The Seattle Times; Vulture; Real Simple.

Discussion Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2019.
From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. New York Times Notable Books and YBP Core Collection 2018.