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Recommended American Lit

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Trader James MacLaren sets out to find his Nez Perce wife who has deserted him ... wife and two daughters in a horrific auto accident and is need of someone to ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Recommended American Lit


1
Recommended American Lit
2
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
  • Cut off from the hospital and rescue squad by an
    ice storm, midwife Sibyl Danforth makes the
    decision to perform a cesarean section on a
    patient she believes has died of a stroke during
    labor, but when her assistant tells police the
    mother was alive during the surgery, Sibyl and
    the entire community are drawn into a gripping
    trial.

3
Getting Inby James Boylan
  • Desperately trying to hide their low SAT scores,
    underdeveloped vocabularies, and shocking dearth
    of extracurricular activities, four high school
    seniors and their three chaperones take to the
    road in a Winnebago to attend interviews at nine
    prestigious New England colleges.

4
Crazy in Alabamaby Mark Childress
  • P.J. recalls the summer of 65, when his small
    Alabama town was filled with racial strife over
    the building of a new swimming pool.

5
Shampoo Planetby Douglas Coupland
  • In this story of two worlds colliding, those of
    1960s parents and their 1990s offspring, Tyler
    Johnson, raised in a hippie commune, is an
    ambitious twenty-year-old Reagan youth, living in
    a decaying northwest city and aspiring to a
    career with the corporation whose offices his
    mother once firebombed.

6
Dangerous Lives of Altar Boysby Chris Fuhrman
  • In the early 1970s, five boys get into a series
    of humorous adventures while attending a Catholic
    school.

7
Roanokeby Sonia Levitin
  • A fictionalized account of the disappearance of
    a group of early American settlers who moved to
    Roanoke Island and were never seen or heard from
    again.

8
Postcards To Father Abrahamby Catherine Lewis
  • Meghan deals with a series of tragedies in her
    life in the course of only two years her mother
    is killed in an accident, her brother is sent to
    Vietnam and returns a much different person, she
    is kicked out of school, and she gets cancer in
    her leg and must have it amputated. Despite these
    difficulties, Meghan maintains a sense of humor
    and is able to bounce back from her hardships by
    writing letters to her idol, Abraham Lincoln, and
    by maintaining friendships with her nurses.

9
Bad Haircut Stories of the Seventiesby Tom
Perrotta
  • A series of short stories follow Buddy through
    his growing up years, as he struggles to deal
    with family, sex, and race relations in a variety
    of funny situations.

10
Slave Dayby Rob Thomas
  • Eight individuals are affected very differently
    during the course of a single day at an Austin,
    Texas high school where students are sold as
    slaves to one another for a fund raiser.

11
If You Come Softlyby Jacqueline Woodson
  • Two teensa Jewish girl and a black boytry to
    maintain secrecy about their relationship to
    avoid criticism from the families and classmates.

12
The Brothers Kby David James Duncan
  • Story of the Chance family living in the Pacific
    Northwest in the early '60s embattled over the
    ideals represented by baseball and religion. The
    family is thrown into turmoil by the Vietnam War
    and when their father's baseball career is
    disrupted by a mill accident.

13
A Prayer for Owen Meanyby John Irving
  • Tells the story of Owen Meany who believes he is
    God's instrument and his friendship with John
    Wheelwright beginning at age eleven when Owen
    hits a foul ball that kills John's mother during
    a Little League game in 1953.

14
The Bean Treesby Barbara Kingsolver
  • Taylor, a poor Kentuckian, makes her way west
    with an abandoned baby girl and stops in Tucson.
    There she finds friends and discovers resources
    in apparently empty places.

15
Icy Sparks by Gwyn Rubio
  • Icy Sparks struggles to come-of-age in Kentucky
    while dealing with her Tourette's Syndrome. She
    meets an elderly woman, also an outcast in their
    small community, and the two form a bond that
    helps them transcend the mistreatment they
    receive at the hands of others in town.

16
A Sudden Country by Karen Fisher
  • Trader James MacLaren sets out to find his Nez
    Perce wife who has deserted him and encounters
    Lucy Mitchell and her family who convince
    MacLaren to lead them through the western
    wilderness.

17
Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
  • Based on the true life story of the author's
    great-grandmother, the novel follows Hattie
    Brooks, age 16, as she travels alone to Eastern
    Montana to prove up a land claim left to her by
    her late uncle. Through the course of a year, she
    plows and seeds over 400 acres, builds a 480-post
    fence, raises chickens, learns to cook, sew,
    clean, and manage money, deals with prejudice
    towards her best friends, who are German
    immigrants, and accomplishes an entirely
    different set of achievements than most 16 year
    olds today face. It doesn't necessarily make her
    better or more admirable, but it definitely makes
    her different.

18
The Memory of Runningby Ron McLarty
  • Smithy Ide is 43, overweight, addicted to
    alcohol and cigarettes, and spends his days
    working at a toy factory where hes responsible
    for making sure the arms on a soldier doll are
    attached correctly. Hes unhappy with his life,
    but seems powerless to change it until a series
    of tragedies occur that lead to his
    transformation.
  • Smithys parents are injured in a car crash and
    then die within days of each other, and soon
    afterward, he learns that his older sister,
    Bethany, has turned up dead in an L.A. morgue. In
    an impulse decision, Smithy picks up his old
    bicycle and begins pedaling across the country to
    identify and claim Bethanys body.
  • As he travels across the country, Smithys
    encounters with a series of people who need his
    help, as well as his examination of the past and
    a resurrected relationship with an old neighbor
    cause him to reconsider himself and regain a self
    of worth and purpose.

19
Lost and Foundby Carolyn Parkhurst
  • In LOST AND FOUND, pairs compete in a worldwide
    scavenger hunt and tell their stories in first
    person.
  • We follow a mother-daughter team as they
    struggle with the race and their own divisive
    secret a married couple whose relationship may
    be an elaborate masquerade two former television
    actors trying to make a comeback, and a bunch of
    others with equally compelling backstories. As
    the novel progresses, were led into each pairs
    past and watch as the competition forces them to
    confront what theyve left behind, and
    additionally, their own definitions of reality.
  • As intriguing as the characters stories are,
    equally compelling is what Parkhurst reveals
    about reality televisionprimarily how much of it
    is planned, scripted, and carefully edited to
    create images and stories that will hook viewers,
    even at the expense of the truth. If youre a fan
    of Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, or
    any of the other shows that purport to show what
    happens to real people in extraordinary, unusual
    circumstances, youll enjoy LOST AND FOUND.

20
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mintby Brady Udall
  • Edgar Mints miracle life begins when, after
    being run over by a postal truck, he not only
    survives, but is relatively unharmed. His only
    apparent disability is his inability to write
    with is hands, but a typewriter is provided for
    him, and he begins his to type the story of his
    misfortunes and adventures.
  • After emerging from a coma, Edgar is abandoned
    by his mother and grandmother, and lives for
    awhile at St. Divines hospital in Arizona, In
    the hospital, Edgar is befriended by an older
    man, Art Crozier, who has lost his wife and two
    daughters in a horrific auto accident and is need
    of someone to care for. It is also at St.
    Divines that Edgar encounters Barry Pinkley, a
    strange and somewhat sinister man who seems to
    want something from Edgar and lurks at the
    sidelines of his life, appearing occasionally to
    interfere.
  • Edgar is later taken in by a distant relative
    who is the caretaker at Willie Sherman, a
    boarding school for Indian Children, and he
    endures years of bullying and persecution before
    finally escaping into a dysfunctional Mormon
    family, who adopts him and with whom he lives
    until their ultimate collapse. It is while he
    lives with the Mormons that Edgar begins to
    investigate his history. Edgar knows that the
    mailman who ran over him has lived for years
    believing that he killed Edgar, and he is
    determined to relieve the man of that burden.
    With the help of his friend Art Crozier, Edgar
    sets off to find the mailman and fulfill his own
    destiny.

21
American Fujiby Sara Backer
  • Gaby, a  young American woman living and working
    in Japan, finds herself selling "fantasy
    funerals" to wealthy Japanese families when she
    is fired from her university job. Her life is
    further complicated by mystery when she is called
    up to aid  Alex, an American man who has come to
    Japan to investigate the mysterious circumstances
    surrounding his only son's death. Reluctant to
    assist at first, Gaby soon becomes embroiled in
    Alex's quest to discover what really happen to
    his son and together, the two of them face the
    sometimes impenetrable Japanese culture and
    discover a shocking truth about the fate that can
    endanger foreigners.

22
House of Sand and Fogby Andre Dubus, III
  • An unlikely premise makes for one of the finest,
    most literary stories of suspense I have read. A
    young woman is mistakenly evicted from her home
    and her house is sold to an Iranian immigrant in
    an auction before she can prevent it. With the
    help of a renegade sheriff's deputy, she launches
    a battle to win back her home. But the new owner
    also feels he has every right--legal and
    moral--to own the house.  A page-turner that ends
    surprisingly. This book has caused more
    discussion among my friends than any other I have
    read recently. Find out why!

23
The Secret Life of Beesby Sue Monk Kidd
  • Lily has always felt responsible for her
    mother's death, but when an explosive argument
    with her abusive father indicates that she may,
    in fact, hhave killed, she decides to run away.
    She takes with her the family's black
    housekeeper, Rosaleen, who has just had a
    confrontation with three racists in town after
    attempting to register to vote, and is being held
    in the town jail. The two escape to Tiburon,
    South Carolina, after Lily finds what she
    considers to be a clue from her dead mother. In
    Tiburon, they find three African-American sisters
    living together and raising bees for honey. The
    women take Lily and Rosaleen in, and Lily soons
    learns much about beekeepping, friendship, and
    herself as she grows closer to the sister and is
    eventually able to confront the truth about
    herself and her mother and the past.

24
A Theory of Relativityby Jacquelyn Mitchard
  • When Gordon McKennas sister, Georgia, and her
    husband, Ray, die in a car crash, he is certain
    he will be able to take on the responsibility of
    raising her one year old daughter, Keefer, as he
    and his parents believe Georgia would have
    wished. The in-laws, howeverwealthy
    southernershave other plans, however, and a
    legal battle for the right to raise the girl
    ensues.
  •  
  • The in-lawsRays parentsshow no mercy in their
    quest to raise their sons daughter as their own.
    They know that Gordon was adopted, and therefore
    not technically a blood relative of Georgia and
    Keefers, and they use this information in their
    custody battle, citing language in the law that
    refers to blood relations.
  •  
  • Readers who enjoy legal thrillers and family
    dramas will be pleased by this taut, emotional
    combination of the two genres.

25
The Man Who Ate the 747by Ben Sherwood
  • J.J. Smith, a records-confirmer for the Book of
    Records, travels to Superior, Nebraska, where a
    man has reportedly been eating a 747 to prove his
    love for a woman. Wally Chubb has a specially
    constructed grinder that allows him to demolish
    small pieces of the airplane and consume them
    with his food.hopefully to catch the attention
    and win the love of Willa Wyatt, whom he has
    loved since they were both children.
  •  
  • J.J. persuades Wally to go public with his
    pursuit and hopefully win a spot in the Book of
    Records, but the ensuing publicity has some
    disastrous results, and J.J., who has long been
    interested only in records and numbers,
    unexpectedly finds love visiting this small
    community. A funny, light read about small town
    America and the power of love.

26
The Reappearance of Sam Webberby Jonathan Scott
Fuqua
  • In THE REAPPEARANCE OF SAM WEBBER by Jonathan
    Scott Fuqua, eleven-year-old Sam Webber and his
    mother move to a poorer section of Baltimore
    after being abandoned by Sam's father. The two
    struggle to make enough money to live, and Sam
    grieves his father. At school, he is bullied by
    larger kids and unhappy until he is befriended by
    the elderly black custodian, Greely, who protects
    and cares for Sam to make up for his own mistakes
    with his children decades earlier. Other adults
    buoy Sam--his mother, her friends Junie and
    Ditch, his mother's boyfriend, Howard, and the
    waitress, Rose, who has known Sam for years.  All
    of them help Sam see his own strengths and help
    his grow and experience happiness despite the
    absence of his father in this well-written,
    entertaining story.
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