Book Sisters
Mondays | 6:30pm to 8pm | Room B5
Expect lively conversation as we review contemporary and classic books related to our lives and the world around us. Members volunteer to partner with one another to lead discussions. See upcoming Book Sisters dates and book selections below. Contact Sally Davies for more information or visit the Facebook private group and request to join.
August 5 | The Spectacular by Fiona Davis
Marion knows she should be happy. Her high school sweetheart is about to propose and sweep her off to life in the suburbs. But Marion feels trapped and exchanges her predictable future for the dazzling life of a Rockette. Meanwhile, the city reels from a string of bombings orchestrated by a person the press has nicknamed “Big Apple Bomber.” The police turn to a young doctor who espouses a radical new technique: psychological profiling. As he and Marion are pulled into the police search, she realizes she needs to take a terrifying risk. In doing so, she may be forced to sacrifice everything she’s worked for, as well as the people she loves the most.
Facilitators: Judy Heike and OPEN
September 16 | Horse: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks
A discarded painting, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history become elements in a story of spirit, obsession, and injustice. Kentucky 1850: An enslaved groom and a foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories. New York City 1954: A gallery owner becomes obsessed with a 19th-century equestrian oil painting. Washington D.C. 2019: Jess, a Smithsonian scientist, and Theo, an art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse – one studying its bones, the other uncovering its history. Based on the true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.
Facilitators: Jan Johnson and Jarren Mohanna
October 28 | Homecoming by Kate Morton
It’s Christmas Eve 1959 in a small town in Australia, and Isabel wants to get her large family out of the house for a picnic. Her husband is travelling, and she’s struggling to be the doting mother she’s expected to be. Tragedy strikes, and no one in that small town is ever the same again. Fast forward to 2018: young Jess discovers that her grandmother fell when climbing to her attic. Jess is eager to understand why Nora was intent on going there, and how she can piece together an old family tragedy.
Facilitators: OPEN
December 9 | Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry
In an extraordinary story that only he could tell, Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him, the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he found in sobriety and the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humor, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fueled it, despite seemingly having it all. This unforgettable memoir is both intimate and eye-opening – as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety.
Facilitators: Mary Sue Brown and Colleen Witmer
Lunch Box Ladies
3rd Thursdays | 11:30am – 1:00pm | Room B21
Expect a lively discussion of the scheduled book. The facilitator will share information about the author and will prepare some discussion questions to get the ball rolling. Everyone is welcome to share their thoughts and comments about the book. Feel free to bring your own lunch to eat while we meet. Contact Kristina Stacey to join.
July 18, 2024 |The Women by Kristin Hannah
From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah’s The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
August 15, 2024 | Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.
As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. (416 pages)
September 19, 2024 | Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
From the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.
These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. (416 pages)
October 17, 2024 | Don’t Forget to Write by Sara Goodman Confino
In 1960, a young woman discovers a freedom she never knew existed in this exhilarating, funny, and emotional novel by the bestselling author of She’s Up to No Good.
When Marilyn Kleinman is caught making out with the rabbi’s son in front of the whole congregation, her parents ship her off to her great-aunt Ada for the summer. If anyone can save their daughter’s reputation, it’s Philadelphia’s strict premier matchmaker. Either that or Marilyn can kiss college goodbye.
To Marilyn’s surprise, Ada’s not the humorless septuagenarian her mother described. Not with that platinum-blonde hair, Hermès scarf, and Cadillac convertible. She’s sharp, straight-talking, takes her job very seriously, and abides by her own rules…mostly. As the summer unfolds, Ada and Marilyn head for the Jersey shore, where Marilyn helps Ada scope out eligible matches―for anyone but Marilyn, that is.
Because if there’s one thing Marilyn’s learned from Ada, it’s that she doesn’t have to settle. With the school year quickly approaching and her father threatening to disinherit her, Marilyn must make her choice for her future: return to the comfortable life she knows or embrace a risky, unknown path on her own. (334 pages)
November, 21, 2024 | The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at the Border by Rosayra Pablo Cruz and Julie Schwietert Collazo
Compelling and urgently important, The Book of Rosy is the unforgettable story of one brave mother and her fight to save her family.
When Rosayra “Rosy” Pablo Cruz made the agonizing decision to seek asylum in the United States with two of her children, she knew the journey would be arduous, dangerous, and quite possibly deadly. But she had no choice: violence—from gangs, from crime, from spiraling chaos—was making daily life hell. Rosy knew her family’s one chance at survival was to flee Guatemala and go north.
After a brutal journey that left them dehydrated, exhausted, and nearly starved, Rosy and her two little boys arrived at the Arizona border. Almost immediately they were seized and forcibly separated by government officials under the Department of Homeland Security’s new “zero tolerance” policy. To her horror Rosy discovered that her flight to safety had only just begun.
In The Book of Rosy, with an unprecedented level of sharp detail and soulful intimacy, Rosy tells her story, aided by Julie Schwietert Collazo, founder of Immigrant Families Together, the grassroots organization that reunites mothers and children. She reveals the cruelty of the detention facilities, the excruciating pain of feeling her children ripped from her arms, the abiding faith that staved off despair—and the enduring friendship with Julie, which helped her navigate the darkness and the bottomless Orwellian bureaucracy.
A gripping account of the human cost of inhumane policies, The Book of Rosy is also a paean to the unbreakable will of people united by true love, a sense of justice, and hope for a better future. (256 pages)