Marlena's suggestions for June book

Just to remind everyone.  We meet on March 24, at Diane's.  We agreed to skip the April meeting.  We meet on May 19, as the next weekend is Memorial Day.  Our June meeting will be on June 30.  Below are Marlena's suggestions for the June book.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry: A Novel
Rachel Joyce
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with
his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even
down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the
next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian
minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he
hasn't seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice
and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the
corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction,
Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely
must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely
pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce's remarkable debut. Harold Fry is
determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in
Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie
Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent
quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating
character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and
sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day,
his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him-allowing him to also
reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself
missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.


One Amazing Thing
Chitra Divakaruni
Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office
in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers
have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an
unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is
disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of
9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An
African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother
with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an
adulterous affair.

When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine
characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to
survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment
when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them
to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale,
"one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone
before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family,
political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their
life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of
stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself.

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats
Jan-Philipp Sendker
A poignant and inspirational love story set in Burma, The Art of Hearing
Heartbeats spans the decades between the 1950s and the present.  When a
successful New York lawyer suddenly disappears without a trace, neither his
wife nor his daughter Julia has any idea where he might be...until they find
a love letter he wrote many years ago, to a Burmese woman they have never
heard of. Intent on solving the mystery and coming to terms with her
father's past, Julia decides to travel to the village where the woman lived.
There she uncovers a tale of unimaginable hardship, resilience, and passion
that will reaffirm the reader's belief in the power of love to move
mountains.

The Light Between Oceans
M. L. Stedman
AFTER FOUR HARROWING YEARS ON THE WESTERN Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly
half a day's journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the
supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife,
Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving
Isabel hears a baby's cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore
carrying a dead man and a living baby.
Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood
a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel
insists the baby is a "gift from God," and against Tom's judgment, they
claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel
return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the
world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

Brooklyn: A Novel
Colm Toibin
One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature"
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland
in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from
Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go,
leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind.

Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least
expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian
family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to
fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her
future.