Neuroscientist and debut novelist Genova mines years of experience in her field to craft a realistic portrait of early onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice Howland has a career not unlike Genova's—she's an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with her husband, John, arguing about the usual (making quality time together, their daughter's move to L.A.) when the first symptoms of Alzheimer's begin to emerge. First, Alice can't find her Blackberry, then she becomes hopelessly disoriented in her own town. Alice is shocked to be diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's (she had suspected a brain tumor or menopause), after which her life begins steadily to unravel.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand - 2010 (NF)

Unbroken is the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. In evocative, immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know.

Randall Stargill lies dying on his southern Appalachian farm, and his four sons have come home to build him a coffin from the cache of rosewood he long has hoarded for the special purpose. Meanwhile, like a vulture hovering over prey, a local real estate developer is readying an offer for the farm that will be extremely hard for the heirs to refuse as soon as the old man is gone. And at the same time, mountain wise-woman Nora Bonesteel, Randall's sweetheart of long ago, must bring to light a small box to be buried with Randall - a box containing human bones. Thus the stage is set for a tale of family strife, dark secrets, and haunting legends that mix present with past tragedies among mountain people torn between tradition and change.

(6 copies, 2 large print copies, 4 sound recordings)

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson - 2010 (NF)

 Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin was falsely accused of stealing a white man's turkeys and was almost beaten to death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem after learning of the grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster made his trek from Louisiana to California in 1953, embittered by "the absurdity that he was doing surgery for the United States Army and couldn't operate in his own home town." Anchored to these three stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively researched study of the "great migration," the exodus of six million black Southerners out of the terror of Jim Crow to an "uncertain existence" in the North and Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates sociological and historical studies into the novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling, and Pershing settling in new lands, building anew, and often finding that they have not left racism behind. The drama, poignancy, and romance of a classic immigrant saga pervade this book, hold the reader in its grasp, and resonate long after the reading is done.

(7 copies)
 

The Wedding Ring by Emilie Richardson - 2005 (F)

For Helen, Nancy, and Tessa, three generations of Henry women, quilts truly represent the fabric of their lives. Using scraps of fabric, matriarch Helen has chronicled her family in the hundreds of quilts she's made. Helen is now a recluse beset by an irrational paranoia that induces her to hoard everything she can, and her bizarre behavior motivates her daughter, Nancy, and granddaughter, Tessa, to spend their summer cleaning out their Shenandoah Valley homestead. For Tessa, the project is a way to avoid facing the tragedy of her young daughter's death, and the toll it is exacting on her marriage. For Nancy, returning to the house where she grew up forces her to confront the questionable circumstances of her own marriage and motherhood. Recalling her work as a volunteer in the Ozark Mountains, and acknowledging her roots in Virginia's pastoral Shenandoah Valley, Richards launches a trilogy of novels inspired by quilt makers, a series that will resonate with fans of family sagas.

Little Tree tells of a boy orphaned very young, who is adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression.  “Little Tree” as his grandparents call him is shown how to hunt and survive in the mountains, to respect nature in the Cherokee Way, taking only what is needed, leaving the rest for nature to run its course. Little Tree also learns the often callous ways of white businessmen and tax collectors, and how Granpa, in hilarious vignettes, scares them away from his illegal attempts to enter the cash economy. Granma teaches Little Tree the joys of reading and education. But when Little Tree is taken away by whites for schooling, we learn of the cruelty meted out to Indian children in an attempt to assimilate them and of Little Tree’s perception of the Anglo world and how it differs from the Cherokee Way.