White Trash by Nancy Isenberg

One more title to add to my never ending effort to understand how in the world the 2016 election happened.  This one is subtitled "The 400-year Untold History of Class in America".  This is not the history I studied - ever.  Clearly the publishers of my history text books stuck to identifying the "winners" and playing to America the Beautiful.  To quote the author, "If this book accomplishes anything it will be to have exposed a number of myths about the American dream, to have disabused readers of the notion that upward mobility is a function of the founders' ingenious plan or the Jacksonian democracy was liberating, or that the Confederacy was about states' rights rather than preserving class and racial distinctions."  I those 400 years there were so many voices that spoke up for change, urging people to pay attention to an unpleasant reality instead of a comforting myth - voices that never made it into the history books.  England used its colonies to empty its poor - even America.  We used Eugenics, Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism to keep the classes alive.  We have to admit to the problem before we can fix it.  Now what?

Chicago by Brian Doyle

What a wonderful homage to a city and to those first delightful years of independence after college!  I think I found something to smile about on every page.  Doyle created this fictional memoir from short humorous vignettes he had sent to his brother to get him through an illness.  He obviously loved his time in Chicago and even if you have never been there, you can tell why.  If I were ever to write about a place that I loved, I would want readers to feel about that place like I felt about Chicago.  A real feel good read.  Not that my book group agreed.  They had a problem with Edward the intelligent talking dog.  Go figure.

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim Defede

The subtitle for this book is "9/11 Gander, Newfoundland". When the skies over the United States were closed following the attack on 9/11, planes on their way from Europe were forced to land in Canada. The town of Gander, population about 10,000, was called upon to play host to almost 7,000 rerouted airline passengers. The crews of the planes took up all the available hotel space and everyone else, without the luggage that was required to remain in the plane, found themselves in schools, churches, and civic buildings. When it became obvious that this was not a 12 hour delay, the community of Gander and the surrounding small towns swung into action. Food and clothing was delivered. Homes were open for showers and a few private moments away from the crowded shelters. Businesses supplied toys and other necessities for free. The best example of human caring responded to one of the worst examples of human tragedy. It is a welcome reminder of our capacity to do right in a world that seems to so often behave badly.

Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

The Miller family has lived on the farm in Miller's Valley for two centuries.  The land often flooded when the waters of Miller's creek rose but it seems to have gotten worse lately.  Then the government sends a man to visit the families in the valley. He offers them new homes on higher land and the promise of a more modern life with great recreational opportunities connected to a new lake -a lake created by a new dam that will flood the valley and bury the old town. Eleven year old Mimi Miller cannot imagine a life anywhere but on her family farm and agrees with her father's plan to resist selling.  But change will come and not just with a dam and a lake.  Families don't stay the same.  People die.  Discovering the secrets that people keep can even change your view of the past. Home might not have anything to do with land or buildings.  The beginning of  Mimi's story is full of references to life in the 60's that will make the reader of a certain age nod with recognition but like most of Quindlen's books, this is about the many different ways we can be family.

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

When young American Alexandra Boyd arrives in Bulgaria to teach, she is hoping the change of scenery will quiet some of her own demons.  Instead a confusion about hotels, an encounter with a very handsome man and his family and a mix-up in luggage lead to a very different adventure.  When she discovers that the bag left behind contains human ashes, she becomes determined to find the owners and return the bag.  Fortunately she finds an English speaking taxi driver she calls Bobby who is willing to take her to the one place she heard mentioned by the family.  But Bobby is not just a taxi driver and the family is not just any family and the people who seem determined to keep Alexandra and Bobby from delivering the mysterious bag and not ordinary bad guys.  And so the search begins across much of the area around the ancient cities of Sofia and Plovdiv.  I am not sure I could have correctly pointed to Bulgaria on a map before reading this book but Kostova's descriptions make me want to explore its ancient cities and beautiful countryside the same way that I wanted to discover all the hidden libraries and secret places in The Historian.  Sign me up for both tours.

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Sloan lives in California but she must have a Eugene connection as evidenced by the number of familiar Eugene teachers she thanks in the acknowledgements.  However in this story, most teachers come up short in understanding brilliant twelve year old Willow.  Clearly she is "somewhere on the spectrum" and when personal tragedy threatens to throw her into the foster system, there is a lot that can go very wrong.  Instead she attaches herself to a host of quirky characters, uses her intelligence to rescue more than herself and, in a slightly unbelievable way, it all works out in the end.  Intended for a YA audience, it might be a peek into a way of living that many will never have to experience.  It might also be a validation of another reader's harsh reality.  Either way it is an ending that is hopeful.

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

Raymond is the co-editor of a boutique publisher in Ashland, Oregon dedicated to publishing books with a "world view".  This book is a lot of things - some worldly  and some which get in the way of others.  First it is about the ecological problems created by the adventurers of the world wanting to get a visit to the continent of Antartica off their bucket list.  On the other hand, her descriptions of this stunning frozen desert and its charming penguin populations make even someone who thinks of 60º as cold consider a visit.  And then there is the love story.  This is a quick read which makes the jumping back and forth in time easier to manage and the Eugene references are fun to follow but the most thoughtful part is the realization that is it very hard to leave a small footprint in the wild and wonderful parts of the world. Darn it.