First Lutheran Library

New Book List

2011

I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby -  As a ten-year-old girl, the only life Ann-Marie Dornn had known was that lived within the boundaries of a secluded but vibrant Hutterite community in southern Manitoba, Canada.  Everything was shared-food, property…and private lives.  When political tensions became unbearable, Ann-Marie’s parents felt they had no choice but to leave the only way of life they had ever known.

Before she left the colony, Ann-Marie (now Mary-Ann Kirkby) had never tasted macaroni and cheese or ridden a bike.  She had never heard of Walt Disney or rock-and-roll.  She was forced to reinvent herself, denying her heritage to fit in with her peers.  Her new life was all about fitting in, but she would never forget the thread that bound her to a childhood that had shaped the essence of who she was.

With great humor and raw honesty, Kirkby describes life on the Hutterite colony, adapting to popular culture and her family’s deep sense of loss for their community.  Controversial and acclaimed, I Am Hutterite is more than a history lesson.  It is a story about retracing steps and understanding how our beginnings often define us.

Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson –A Novel of Three Generations.  Sweeping through one hundred years of Scandinavian history, this luminous story follows three generations of Swedish women-a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter-whose lives are linked through a century of great love and great loss.  Resonating with truth and revelation, this moving novel deftly explores the often difficult but enduring ties between mothers and daughters, the sacrifices, compromises, and rewards in the relationships between men and women, and the patterns of emotion that repeat themselves through generations.  If you have ever wanted to connect with the past, or rediscover family, Hanna’s Daughters will strike a chord in your heart.

The Girls from Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow –Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Jane, Jenny, Karen, Cathy, Angela, Sally, Diana Sheila..  Meet the Ames Girls, eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa.  As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet they managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child’s illness, and mysterious death of one member of their group.  Now in their forties, the girls have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend.  Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life’s joys and challenges-and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.

Good to a Fault  by Marina Endicott – This profoundly humane novel wrings suspense and humor out of the everyday choices we make, revealing the delicate balance between sacrifice and self-interst, doing good and being good.

Clara Purdy is at a crossroads.  At forty-three, she is divorced, living in her late parents’ house, and nearing her twentieth year as a claims adjuster at a local insurance firm.  Driving to the bank during her lunch hour, she crashes into a sharp left turn, taking the Gage family in the other car with her.  When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara decides to do the right thing.  She moves Lorraine’s three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house-and then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love.

What, exactly does it mean to be good?  What do we owe each other in this life, and what do we deserve?  Good to a Fault is an ultimately joyful book that digs deep, with leavening humor, into questions of morality, class, and social responsibility.  Marine Endicott looks at life and death through the compassionate, humane lens of a born novelist: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance in between.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson  You are about to travel to Edgecombe

Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.  Among them is Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), the unlikely hero.  Wry, courtly, opinionated, and completely endearing, Major Pettigrew is one of the most indelible characters in contemporary fiction, and from the very first page of this remarkable novel he will steal your heart.

The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum and a properly brewed cup of tea.  But then his brother’s death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village.  Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more.  But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and regarding her as the permanent foreigner.  Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?