From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a probing look at the
struggles of America’s white working class through the author’s own story of
growing up in a poor Rust Belt town Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate
and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of poor, white Americans. The
disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for
over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never
before been written about as searingly from the inside. In Hillbilly Elegy,
J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline
feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.
The Vance family story began with hope in postwar America. J.D.’s
grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved north from Kentucky’s
Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around
them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren
would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in
achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly
Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.’s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister,
and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new
middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism,
poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing
honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his
chaotic family history.
A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful
figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really
feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American
dream for a large segment of this country.
THE DARING LADIES OF LOWELL by
Kate Alcott
Alcott (The Dressmaker, 2012)
chooses another working-class girl as the heroine of her second historical
novel. To Alice Barrow, a job at a textile mill in 1832 Lowell, Massachusetts,
represents both an escape from her rural roots and a chance to forge an
independent future. Although the hours are long and the work arduous, she
enjoys the companionship of the mill girls and the opportunity to take
advantage of the intellectual subculture of Lowell, including the mill’s
literary magazine and lectures at the Lyceum. Alice’s common sense and
intelligence attract the attention of Samuel Fiske, the mill owner’s son, who
invites her to act as an emissary for her coworkers at a meeting with his
family. However, when Alice’s best friend is found hanged, her burgeoning
relationship with Samuel is threatened as his family withholds crucial evidence
during the investigation. Set against an authentically detailed mill-town
backdrop, this novel interweaves the industrial revolution, feminism, and
workers’ rights into an engrossing narrative with a love story at its core.
GOOD HARBOR: A NOVEL
by Anita Diamant
Anita Diamant, whose rich portrayal of the biblical world
of women illuminated her acclaimed international bestseller The Red Tent,
now crafts a moving novel of contemporary female friendship.
Good Harbor is the long stretch of Cape Ann beach where two women friends walk
and talk, sharing their personal histories and learning life's lessons from
each other. Kathleen Levine, a longtime resident of Gloucester, Massachusetts,
is maternal and steady, a devoted children's librarian, a convert to Judaism,
and mother to two grown sons. When her serene life is thrown into turmoil by a
diagnosis of breast cancer at fifty-nine, painful past secrets emerge and she
desperately needs a friend. Forty-two-year-old Joyce Tabachnik is a
sharp-witted freelance writer who is also at a fragile point in her life. She's
come to Gloucester to follow her literary aspirations, but realizes that her
husband and young daughter are becoming increasingly distant. Together,
Kathleen and Joyce forge a once-in-a-lifetime bond and help each other to
confront scars left by old emotional wounds.
THE ORPHAN'S TALE: A NOVEL by Pam Jenoff
A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War
II, The Orphan's Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their
harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival
Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant
by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small
rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep… When Noa discovers a
boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she
is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will
change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into
the snowy night.
Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze
act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead
aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond.
But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and
Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another—or if
the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything.
