ADULT BOOK DISCUSSION                  MID-DAY MUSINGS

Mid-Day Musings is held on the fourth Monday of each month at 1:30 p.m. in the Founders' Room on the second floor of the Library.  Everyone is welcome to attend and contribute their ideas in a relaxed and respectful way.  Books will be made available through the Library for loan.  Please make sure you reserve your copy early so we have enough for everyone. 
Questions:  contact Tess at 773-6753 or email.

May 18, 2009    In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
During the last days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic, three young women, members of a conservative, pious Catholic family, who had become committed to the revolutionary overthrow of the regime, were ambushed and assassinated as they drove back from visiting their jailed husbands.  thus martyred, the Mirabel sisters have become mythical figures in their country, where they are known as las mariposas (the butterflies), from their underground code names.   Herself a native of the Dominican Republic, Alvarez has fictionalized their story in a narrative that starts slowly but builds to a gripping intensity.   (Publishers Weekly) 

June 22, 2009 The Kindness of Strangers by Katrina Kittle 
Master caterer Sarah Laden is barely holding her life together as a widow with two difficult sons-recalcitrant teen Nate and troubled fifth-grader Danny-when the unthinkable happens.  Her best friend and neighbor, Courtney Kendrick, is arrested in a child sex abuse scandal.  Courtney's husband has vanished; their 11-year-old son, Jordan, is in the hospital recovering from a a suicide attempt; and across the street Nate is finding, in Jordan's backpack, evidence of unthinkable abuse.  Kittle (Traveling Light; Two Truths and a Lie) crafts a disturbing but compelling storyline, as Sarah, Nate and Jordan uncover and come to terms with the horror in alternating chapters.  Sarah, for instance, is shocked to learn that she dropped off food for the Kendrick's sex parties; Jordan must decide whether or not he wants to continue a relationship with his mother-who insists she's innocent-if and when she gets acquitted.  Kittle's research sits awkwardly in expository dialogue-"One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before their eighteenth birthdays," intones the detective who will later become Sarah's love interest-but it doesn't slow the momentum.  Though the movement is toward healing, there are bumpy roads ahead for everybody in this melodramatic but gripping read.  (Publishers Weekly)

July 20, 2009 One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
One Thousand White Women is the story of May Dodd and a colorful assembly of pioneer women who, under the auspices of the U.S. government, travel to the western prairies in 1875 to intermarry among the Cheyenne Indians.  the covert and controversial "Brides for Indians" program, launched by the administration of Ulysses S. Grant, is intended to help assimilate the Indians into the white man's world.  Toward that end May and friends embark upon the adventure of their lifetime.  Jim Fergus has so vividly depicted the American West that it is as if these diaries are a capsule in time. (bn.com)

August 24, 2009  Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides
In Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides gives us a magnificent history of the American conquest of the West.  At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend.  Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation.  Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won. (bn.com)

Previous Mid-Day Musings Selections:

January 26, 2009  Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
In this vivid portrait of one day in a woman's life, Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of a party she is to give that evening, while in her mind she is much more that a perfect society hostess.  As she readies her house she is flooded with memories and, met with the realities of the present, Clarissa re-examines the choices she has made,  hesitantly looking ahead to growing old.  Undeniably triumphant, this is the inspired novelistic outline of human consciousness.

February 23, 2009 The Double bind by Chris Bohjalian
Readers will be startled to learn early on that the heroine of this engrossing puzzle, 26-year-old Laurel Estabrook, was born in West Egg.  Wait a minute, wasn't West Egg where Jay Gatsby lived?  Laurel works in a Burlington, Vt. homeless shelter and is trying to overcome mental and physical scars incurred from a brutal assault some six years earlier.  After being given a portfolio of photographs taken by a recently deceased resident of the shelter, Bobbie Crocker, she becomes obsessed with questions surrounding what appears to be a picture of herself shot on the day of her attack.  Laurel's already fragile mental state begins to unravel as she follows Bobbie's life from his rich-kid childhood on Long Island to homelessness in Vermont.  The Gatsby references form the basis of the mystery, compelling readers to try to imagine how this fictional backdrop relates to the novel's "reality".  It's a high-wire act for bestseller Bohjalian (Midwives), and while the climatic explanation may be a letdown for some, he generally pulls off a tricky and intriguing premise.  (Publishers Weekly)

March 23, 2009  This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff
In this unforgettable memoir of boyhood in the 1950s, we meet the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning.  Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move.  Between themselves they develop on almost telepathic trust that sees them through their wanderings from Florida to a small town in Washington State.  Fighting for identity and self-respect against the unrelenting hostility of a new stepfather, Toby's growing up is at once poignant and comical.  His various schemes-running away to Alaska, forging checks, and stealing cars-lead eventually to an act of outrageous self-invention that releases him into a new world of possibility.  (Publishers Weekly)

April 20, 2009  The Rope Walk by Carrie Brown
Alice MacCauley and her family are celebrating her 10th birthday.  As the guests arrive, readers are introduced to neighbors, friends, and family, all of whom have hidden prejudices and anxieties.  Theo, the biracial grandson of Alice's father's friends, is supposed to be visiting his grandparents, but by the end of the evening he is sharing Alice's bedroom and will become a fixture in her family for the remainder of the season.  Over the course of the summer they share secrets, befriend a dying artist, and learn more about suffering, humanity, and intolerance than any child her age needs to know.  Together they try to make sense of the world, particularly of how adults think and why people hate the way they do.  One of the lessons Alice learns is that the most heartfelt intentions can produce the most tragic results.  Teens looking for an angst-filled novel will find that this one asks many questions about life and relationships without providing any pat answers.  (School Library Journal)