The Current Book Club Choice

Jewel, by Bret Lott

In the backwoods of Mississippi, a land of honeysuckle and grapevine, Jewel and her husband, Leston, are truly blessed; they have five fine children. When Brenda Kay is born in 1943, Jewel gives thanks for a healthy baby, last-born and most welcome. Jewel is the story of how quickly a life can change; how, like lightning, an unforeseen event can set us on a course without reason or compass. In this story of a woman's devotion to the child who is both her burden and God's singular way of smiling on her, Bret Lott has created a mother-daughter relationship of matchless intensity and beauty, and one of the finest, most indomitable heroines in contemporary American fiction.


Billie Letts   Chris Bohjalian   Pearl Cleage   Wally Lamb   Edwidge Danticat   Anna Quindlen

Where The Heart Is, by Billie Letts

Abandoned by her boyfriend at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma, Novalee Nation, 17 years old and seven months pregnant, soon discovers the treasures hiding in this small Southwest town. "A heartfelt, gratifying read".--"Publishers Weekly".


Midwives, by Chris Bohjalian

A talented midwife is arrested for murder when she saves a baby by performing a Caesarean section once she believes the mother has died -- only to have her assistant insist later that the woman was still very much alive. Told in the mesmerizing voice of the midwife's daughter, Midwives depicts the aftermath of the tragedy.


What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, by Pearl Cleage

This highly praised debut novel by a renowned African-American playwright/essayist is a gritty yet warm and inspiring story of hope, love, and homecoming. On learning she has the AIDS virus, Ava Johnson closes her beauty parlor in Atlanta and returns to her hometown in Michigan, devoting herself to counselling black girls in trouble. In the process she falls in love with a man convicted of murder.


I Know This Much Is True, by Wally Lamb

This powerfully written story of the strained relationship between identical twin brothers and their sordid family history tackles sin and redemption and the ways in which pride surrenders itself to humanity. From the acclaimed author of the bestseller She's Come Undone.


Breath, Eyes, Memory, by Edwidge Danticat

After living for twelve years with her aunt in an impoverished village in Haiti, Sophie Caco travels to New York City to live with a mother she does not remember. With Breath, Eyes, Memory, author Edwidge Danticat has created a vivid novel of mothers and daughters, exile and return, disgrace and honor.


Black and Blue, by Anna Quindlen

A stunning novel about a marriage that begins in passion and becomes violent, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author of "Thinking Out Loud." Fran Benedetto tells a spellbinding story of how a passionate marriage became a nightmare, and what finally makes her run away to start a new life with her son, under a new name. Living in fear of discovery, yet also with increasing confidence, freedom, and hope, Fran unravels the complex threads of family, identity, and desire that shape a woman's life, even as she struggles to create a new one; and Quindlen writes with depth, humor, and insight about the real lives of men and women, the varieties of love, the deep bond between mother and child, the solace of family and friendship.

Read the BookPage review of Black and Blue

ALSO BY ANNA QUINDLEN

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