Diane's suggestions for October 2012, Book

Say You're One of Them (Oprah's Book Club)
Uwem Akpan

Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances.

A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family’s struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle’s attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees—a microcosm of today’sAfrica.  A Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear.

Uwem Akpanâ’s debut signals the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer who gives a matter-of-fact reality to the most extreme circumstances in stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

Midwives (Oprah's Book Club) [Paperback]
Chris Bohjalian

With a suspense, lyricism, and moral complexity that recall To Kill a Mockingbird and Presumed Innocent, this compulsively readable novel explores what happens when a woman who has devoted herself to ushering life into the world finds herself charged with responsibility in a patient's tragic death.

The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if--as Sibyl's assistant later charges--the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?

As recounted by Sibyl's precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except for the fact that all its participants are acting from the highest motives--and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her own conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the very best novels ever do.

The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society
AuGusta Trobaugh

Readers will laugh at the antics of steel magnolia vigilante justice as the tea-toting, bible-quoting ladies fumble and bumble in their endeavor to protect their cohort and town . . . . the classic good rural vs. evil-urban premise makes for a fine, polite (sort of like a southern contemporary Arsenic and Old Lace) . . . tale.  Harriet Klausner Book Reviews Coconut cake, grits, poisoned turtle stew and bird-watching . . . the ladies of tiny Tea-Olive, Georgia share a lot of interests, including murder.Retired judge L. Hyson Breed, a Yankee, picked the wrong Southern woman to trick, bully and steal from. The members of the Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society plot revenge after the judge’s marriage to their friend, Sweet, turns out to be a greedy grab for her land and for control of their town. To the rescue: Beulah, Zion and Wildwood (all named after hymns, as is Sweet). The only problem? The wannabe murderers are southern matrons from a more civilized generation. How does one remain polite even while planning to kill a man and get away with it? Augusta Trobaugh is the acclaimed author of these southern novels also from Bell Bridge Books SOPHIE AND THE RISING SUN MUSIC FROM BEYOND THE MOONRIVER JORDANRESTING IN THE BOSOM OF THE LAMBSWAN PLACEPRAISE JERUSALEM!