2008 Picks by
the Midwest Booksellers Association
|
The Plain Sense of Things
by Pamela Carter Joern
(Pamela Carter Joern is also the author of The Floor of the Sky.)
The Plain Sense of Things tells the stories of three generations of a western Nebraska family. These tales of sorrow and hope are connected by the sinews of need and flawed love that keep families together. A farm wife struggles to support her children after the death of her second husband; a young woman grapples with the shift from girlhood to motherhood; World War II wreaks havoc on those left behind; and a failing farmstead breaks a family’s heart. Amid hardship and change, these interwoven stories illuminate the resilience and dignity—and the subtle sweetness—of a life lived in clear view of the plain sense of things. (Bison Books)
Red Knife
by William Kent Krueger
Moved to write this book by the Red Lake school shootings, Krueger says this has been one of his hardest books to write.
When the daughter of a powerful businessman dies as a result of her meth addiction, her father, vows revenge. His target is the Red Boyz, a gang of Ojibwe youths accused of supplying the girl's fatal drug dose. When the head of the Red Boyz and his wife are murdered in a way that suggests execution, the Ojibwe gang mobilizes, and the citizens of Tamarack County brace themselves for war, white against red. Both sides look to Cork O’Connor, a man of mixed heritage, to uncover the truth behind the murders. In Red Knife, Krueger gives his readers a vivid picture of racial conflict in small-town America, as well as a sensitive look at the secrets we keep from even those closest to us and the destructive nature of all that is left unsaid between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, friends and lovers. (Simon & Schuster).
A Splintered History of Wood:
Belt Sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats
by Spike Carlsen
In a world without wood, we wouldn't have had the fire, heat, and shelter that allowed us to expand into the colder regions of the planet. If civilization somehow did develop, our daily lives still would be vastly different: there would be no violins, baseball bats, chopsticks, or wine corks. The book you are now holding wouldn't exist.
At the same time, many of us are removed from the world where wood is shaped and celebrated every day. That world is inhabited by a unique assortment of eccentric craftsmen and passionate enthusiasts who have created some of the world's most beloved musical instruments, feared weapons, dazzling architecture, sacred relics, and bizarre forms of transportation.
In A Splintered History of Wood, Spike Carlsen has uncovered the most outlandish characters and examples, from world-champion chainsaw carvers to blind woodworkers, the Miraculous Staircase to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many more, in a passionate and personal exploration of nature's greatest gift. (Harper Collins).
Red Sky in Morning
by Patrick Culhane
Iowa native Ensign Peter Maxwell longs for action after two years of leading the Navy choir after being called up from the reserves following Pearl
Harbor. He gets a new posting on the USS Liberty Hill, stationed at San Francisco’s Port Chicago, but his new captain has no respect for junior officers like Peter and even less for the African-Americans who make up his crew. Despite tensions between captain and crew, a two-week shakedown cruise goes well. When the ship returns to San Francisco, however, Port Chicago is blown up and Liberty’s second in command is murdered. There is an enemy within, and Maxwell will do everything to stop him, including putting himself on the front line of danger.
The Man in the Blizzard
by Bart Schneider
This tongue-in-cheek little crime novel takes place shortly before the Republican National Convention comes to St. Paul. Twin Cities pothead private eye Augie Boyer is out of sorts. He’s been smoking too much Ponchartrain Pootie, expanding his waistline with too much fried food, thinking too much about his ex-wife, suffering from a dismal testosterone level, and grousing about the current Republican governor’s vetoes and blatant right-wing favoritism. When Augie discovers a plot to kill three abortion doctors in connection with a Neo-Nazi-funded “Labor Day” anti-abortion rally on the state capitol grounds, he rallies his troops – a St. Paul detective who’s a rabid poetry evangelist; a suave black-Irish code master, and Blossom, his spike-haired ex-con assistant. The plot thickens by the minute, Augie’s radical songwriter/singer daughter arrives for a counter-rally, and danger comes ever closer……
Stalking Susan
by Julie Kramer
Television reporter Riley Spartz is recovering from a heartbreaking, headline-making catastrophe of her own when a longtime police source drops two homicide files in her lap in the back of a dark movie theater. Both cold cases involve women named Susan strangled on the same day, one year apart. Last seen alive in one of Minneapolis’s poorest neighborhoods, their bodies are each dumped in one of the city’s wealthiest areas. Riley senses a pattern between those murders and others pulled from a computer database of old death records. She must broadcast a warning soon, especially to viewers named Susan, because the deadly anniversary is approaching.
Undiscovered Country
by Lin Enger
Review of Undiscovered Country by Sally Wills
The book opens with seventeen year old Jesse Matson in a tree stand in November. When he heard a shot just before dusk, Jesse raced to his dad’s tree stand, finding his father dead, apparently from a self-inflicted rifle shot.
In the months which followed, Jesse tried to keep his family together and functioning, while struggling with his father’s death and issues of betrayal and justice. What did his father’s brother Clay, suddenly very attentive to Jesse’s mom, know about his father’s death?
This beautifully written book is a re-telling of the Hamlet story in contemporary Minnesota. I highly recommend it!
Abbeville
by Jack Fuller
Until the dot.com bubble burst, George Bailey never gave much thought to why his grandfather seemed so happy. But then George’s wealth vanished, rocking his self-confidence, threatening his family’s security and making his adolescent son’s difficult life even more painful. Returning to the little Central Illinois farm town of Abbeville, where his grandfather had prospered and then fallen into ruin, flattened during the Depression, George seeks out the details of this man’s rise, fall, and spiritual rebirth, hoping he might find a way to recover himself. Abbeville sweeps through the history of late-19th through early-21st century America—among loggers stripping the North Woods bare, at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, with French soldiers at the Battle of Verdun, into the abyss of the Depression, and finally toward the new millennium’s own nightmares. At the same time it examines life at its most intimate. How can one hold onto meaning amidst the brutally indifferent cycles of war and peace, flood and drought, boom and bust, life and death?
So Long at the Fair
by Christina Schwarz
The bestselling author of Drowning Ruth returns to small-town Wisconsin. As in Drowning Ruth, Schwarz weaves past and present into a richly textured portrait of the secrets and deceptions that simmer beneath everyday life in a small Midwestern town. In the summer of 1963 a plot for revenge destroys a career, a friendship, and a family. The consequences of the scandalous event continue to reverberate, touching the next generation. Thirty years later, over the course of one day, Jon struggles to decide whether to end his affair or his marriage. His wife, Ginny, moving closer to discovering his adultery, begins working for an older man who is mysteriously connected to their families’ pasts. And Jon’s mistress is being courted by a suitor who may be mo re menacing than he initially seems. As relationships among the characters ebb and flow on that July day, Christina Schwarz illuminates the ties that bind people together—and the surprising risks they take in the name of love.
Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch,
the Most Famous Horse in America
by Charles Leerhsen
A hundred years ago, the most famous athlete in America was a horse. But Dan Patch was more than a sports star; he was a cultural icon in the days before the automobile. Born crippled and unable to stand, he was nearly euthanized. For a while, he pulled the grocer's wagon in his hometown of Oxford, Indiana. But when he was entered in a race at the county fair, he won — and he kept on winning. He became the first celebrity sports endorser; his name appeared on breakfast cereals, washing machines, cigars, razors, and sleds. At a time when the highest-paid baseball player, Ty Cobb, was making $12,000 a year, Dan Patch was earning over a million dollars. Dan's original owner was intimidated into selling him, and America's favorite horse spent the second half of his career touring the country in a plush private railroad car and putting on speed shows for crowds that sometimes exceeded 100,000 people. But the automobile cooled America's romance with the horse, and by the time he died in 1916, Dan was all but forgotten. His last owner, a Minnesota entrepreneur gone bankrupt, buried him in an unmarked grave. His achievements have faded, but throughout the years, a faithful few kept alive the legend of Dan Patch, and in Crazy Good, Charles Leerhsen travels through their world to bring back to life this fascinating story of triumph and treachery in small-town America and big-city racetracks (Simon & Schuster). $26
Shelter Half: A Novel
by Carol Bly
“A young woman's body lay undisturbed for a week in mid-November.” So begins Shelter Half, a novel about a few people in a northern Minnesota town. Some of them-the town cop, the doctor, and a young couple in love-are smart enough to recognize cruelty that comes at them from huge organizations far outside the town limits. They are not chicken. They don't duck. If their nation and their world look grisly, they still do what they can for love and justice. They look out for one another. In the end, a retired US Brigadier General brings them a surprise about one of their best-loved townspeople. (Holy Cow! Press / Consortium). $15.95
Julia Gillian (And the Art of Knowing)
by Alison McGhee
Ten-year-old Julia Gillian knows everything about her quirky neighbors, her Minneapolis neighborhood, even the inscrutable "claw machine" in the back of the corner hardware store. The one thing Julia Gillian doesn't know is how the book she's reading is going to end. It doesn't seem as if it's going to have a happy ending, and that scares her. But Julia learns a little something about fear: sometimes you just have to work through it. And though bad things do happen sometimes, having good friends and family around you makes life a bit less scary - and much more fun. (Scholastic Press) $15.99
Savvy
by Ingrid Law
Mississippi Beaumont (“Mibs”) is about to turn 13. For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a magical secret. They each possess a “savvy”, a special supernatural power that strikes when they turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, Mibs’ older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity. Now it’s the eve of Mibs’ big day. As if waiting weren’t hard enough, the family gets scary news two days before Mibs’ birthday: Poppa has been in a terrible accident. Mibs decides to get to the hospital, 60 miles from home, and prove that her new power, yet to be revealed, can save her dad. So she sneaks onto a pink bible salesman’s bus, only to find the bus heading in the wrong direction. Suddenly Mibs finds herself on a journey that will force her to make sense of growing up and of other people, who might also have a few secrets hidden just beneath the skin. (Dial Press Books for Young Readers / Penguin Group). $16.99 |
