THE INVENTION OF WINGS, a novel by Sue Monk Kidd
In
the early 1830s, Sarah Grimké and her younger sister, Angelina, were
the most infamous women in America. They had rebelled so vocally against
their family, society, and their religion that they were reviled,
pursued, and exiled from their home city of Charleston, South Carolina,
under threat of death. Their crime was speaking out in favor of liberty
and equality and for African American slaves and women, arguments too
radically humanist even for the abolitionists of their time. Their
lectures drew crowds of thousands, even (shockingly, then) men, and
their most popular pamphlet directly inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin--published
15 years later. These women took many of the first brutal backlashes
against feminists and abolitionists, but even their names are barely
known now. Sue Monk Kidd became fascinated by these sisters, and the
question of what compelled them to risk certain fury and say with the
full force of their convictions what others had not (or could not). She
discovered that in 1803, when Sarah turned 11, her parents gave her the
“human present” of 10-year-old Hetty to be her handmaid, and Sarah
taught Hetty to read, an act of rebellion met with punishment so severe
that the slave girl died of "an unspecified disease" shortly after her
beating. Kidd knew then that she had to try to bring Hetty back to life
(“I would imagine what might have been," she tells us), and she starts
these girls' stories here, both cast in roles they despise. She trades
chapters between their voices across decades, imagining the Grimké
sisters’ courageous metamorphosis and, perhaps more vitally, she gives
Hetty her own life of struggle and transformation. Few characters have
ever been so alive to me as Hetty and Sarah. Long after you finish this
book, you'll feel its courageous heart beating inside your own.
THE ORPHAN TRAIN, Christina Baker Kline (A Novel Based on Actual Events)
Between
1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of
the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of
abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would
they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they face a
childhood and adolescence of hard labor and servitude?
As
a young Irish immigrant, Vivian Daly was one such child, sent by rail
from New York City to an uncertain future a world away. Returning east
later in life, Vivian leads a quiet, peaceful existence on the coast of
Maine, the memories of her upbringing rendered a hazy blur. But in her
attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past.
Seventeen-year-old
Molly Ayer knows that a community-service position helping an elderly
widow clean out her attic is the only thing keeping her out of juvenile
hall. But as Molly helps Vivian sort through her keepsakes and
possessions, she discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as
they appear. A Penobscot Indian who has spent her youth in and out of
foster homes, Molly is also an outsider being raised by strangers, and
she, too, has unanswered questions about the past.
Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful tale of upheaval and resilience, second chances, and unexpected friendship.
THE PERSECUTION OF MILDRED DUNLAP, A novel by Paulette Mahurin
A
women's Brokeback Mountain. The year 1895 was filled with memorable
historical events: the Dreyfus Affair divided France; Booker T.
Washington gave his Atlanta address; the United States expanded the
effects of the Monroe Doctrine to cover South America; and Oscar Wilde
was tried and convicted for gross indecency under Britain's recently
passed law that made sex between males a criminal offense. When news of
Wilde's conviction went out over telegraphs worldwide, it threw a small
Nevada town into chaos. This is the story of what happened when the
lives of its citizens were impacted by the news of Oscar Wilde's
imprisonment. It is a chronicle of hatred and prejudice with all its
unintended and devastating consequences, and how love and friendship
bring strength and healing.
A ROOM WITH A VIEW, a novel by E.M. Forster
In common with much of his other writing, this work by the eminent
English novelist and essayist E. M. Forster (1879–1970) displays an
unusually perceptive view of British society in the early 20th century.
Written in 1908, A Room with a View is a social comedy set in
Florence, Italy, and Surrey, England. Its heroine, Lucy Honeychurch,
struggling against straitlaced Victorian attitudes of arrogance,
narrow-mindedness and snobbery, falls in love-while on holiday in
Italy-with the socially unsuitable George Emerson.
Caught
up in a claustrophobic world of pretentiousness and rigidity, Lucy
ultimately rejects her fiancé, Cecil Vyse, and chooses, instead, to wed
her true love, the young man whose sense of freedom and lack of
artificiality became apparent to her in the Italian pensione where they
first met. This is a classic exploration of passion, human nature and
social convention.
