BOOK
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FEBRUARY MEETING
H
IS FOR HAWK by HELEN MACDONALD
On
the surface H is for Hawk is a falconry book chronicling the training
of a Northern Goshawk, and yet it is so much more. It is a
brilliantly written memoir of the darkest time in Helen Macdonald’s
as she struggled to cope with the sudden death of her father, noted
photographer, photo journalist Alisdair MacDonald. She spent a year
training a northern goshawk in the wake of her father’s death.
Having been a falconer for many years she purchased a young goshawk
to help her through the grieving process. The story opens on Helen
who is a protagonist as well as a falconer. She’s talking about how
she loves birds. Specifically, she talks about the Goshawk, Known for
being difficult to train, these savage birds have piqued her
interest.
CRY
THE BELOVED COUNTRY by ALLAN PATON
This
is a story about a black man’ country under white man’s law. A
deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalu and his son
Absalom set against the background of a land and a people driven by
racial injustice, It is a classic work of love, hope, courage, and
endurance born of the dignity of man. One of the important
characters in the book was the land of South Africa itself. It is
about Kumalu coming from a small village who undertakes his first
journey to Johannesburg to search for his only son. This is a story
of James Jarvis (white English-speaking farmer) and the pastor’s
relationship to him because of the things Kumulu’s son has done to
his family.
Msimangu
is another important person in this novel. He is a warm, generous
and humble young mister in Sophiatown explaining the political and
socioeconomic difficulties that the black population faces and
providing shrewd commentary on both blacks and whites. Of all the
characters ln the novel he has the clearest understanding of South
Africa’s injustices, and he serves as Paton’s mouthpiece in
suggesting a solution: Christian love.
Absolom
Kumalu Stephen’s son leaves home for Johannesburg for work, loves
touch with his family and falls into a life of crime. He carries a
gun for protection and fires the weapon in fear killing James Jarvis
son Arthur. Even though a friend is suspected of crime Absolum is
sentenced to be executed.
Arthur
Jarvis is a solution S Africa needs and even though he is murdered
some hope lives on his young son. He is a staunch opponent of S
Africa’s racial injustices. He spends his life at the center of
the debates on racism and poverty, and his essays and articles
provide answers to many of the novels questions. His motives are
selfless and he works for change not because he seeks personal glory
but because he is way of the system’s contradictions and
oppressions.
THE
WOMEN IN THE CASTLE by JESSICA SHATTUCK
It
is a powerful and propulsive story of the relationships of three
German widows and their children whose lives and fates become
intertwined – an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive
novel each of whom suffers loss and tragedy during and after World
War II.
Amid
the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns
to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing
stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow
of resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate
Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her
husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her
fellow resistance widows. First Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin,
the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation
home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of
their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and
naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army
solders. Then Marianne locates Ania, another resister’s wife, and
her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that
hours the millions displaced by the war.
As
Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her
husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and
circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that
the black-and-white, highly principled world of her principled past
has become infinitely more complicated and filled with dark secrets
that threaten to tear them apart, Eventually, all three women must
come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before,
during and after the war – each with their own unique share of
challenges
BORN
A CRIME by TREVOR NOAH
These
are stories from Trevor Noah childhood growing up in post-apartheid
in South Africa. As a light-skinned product of a white Swiss father
and black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by
five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion,
Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life,
bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to
hide him form a government that could at any moment steal him away.
He never fit well into the racial schemes introduced after apartheid.
Even under apartheid there was trouble fitting in. Finally liberated
by the end of S Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his
mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and
embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.
This
is a story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young
man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never
supposed to exist. It’s a story of that young man’s relations
with his fearless, rebellious and fervently religious mother – his
teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of
poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own
life.
The
stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic and deeply
affecting, whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard
times, being thrown for a moving car during an attempted kidnapping,
or just trying to survive the life-and death pitfalls of dating in
high schools, Trego illuminates his curious world with incisive wit
and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving
and funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in
a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a
mother’s unconventional love
UNDAUNTED
COURAGE by STEPHEN E AMBROSE
In
this sweeping adventure story, the author presents the definitive
account of one of the most momentous journeys in American History. He
follows the Lewis and Clark Expedition from Thomas Jefferson’s hope
of finding a waterway to the Pacific, through the heart-stopping
moments of the actual trip, to Lewis’s lonely demise on the Natchez
Traced. Along the way, the author shows us the American West a Lewis
saw it. Wild, awesome and pristinely beautiful. One person said it
was a swiftly moving, full-dress treatment of the expedition… A
lively retelling of the journey of the two captains conveyed with
passionate enthusiasm by the author.
