The Current Book Club Choice

White Oleander, by Janet Fitch

White Oleander is the unforgettable story of Astrid's journey through a series of foster homes and her efforts to find a place for herself in impossible circumstances. Each home is its own universe, with a new set of laws and lessons to be learned. With determination and humor, Astrid confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a motherless child in an indifferent world can become.


Anita Shreve  Bernhard Schlink   Bret Lott   Billie Letts   Chris Bohjalian   Pearl Cleage  


The Pilot's Wife, by Anita Shreve

A pilot's wife is taught to be prepared for the late-night knock at the door. But when Kathryn Lyons receives word that a plane flown by her husband, Jack, has exploded near the coast of Ireland, she confronts the unfathomable-one startling revelation at a time. Soon drawn into a maelstrom of publicity fueled by rumors that Jack led a secret life, Kathryn sets out to learn who her husband really was, whatever that knowledge might cost. Her search propels this taut, impassioned novel as it movingly explores the question, How well can we ever really know another person?


The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover. She enthralls him with her passion but puzzles him with her odd silences. Then she inexplicably disappears. When Michael next sees her, he is a young law student, and Hanna is on trial for a hideous crime. But as he watches her refuse to defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder. Masterfully evoking eroticism while addressing the moral dilemmas that continue to haunt postwar Germany, "The Reader" is an intimate coming-of-age story as well as a frank and sensitive exploration of the dark areas of a nation's uneasy and embattled conscience.


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.


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.


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