WR Fitzgibbon: Recommended Reading: Home

"Cut off from the life of ranching he has come to love by his grandfather's death, John Grady Cole flees to Mexico, where he and his two companions embark on a rugged and cruelly idyllic adventure."

Lydia Quixano Pérez lives a comfortable life in Acapulco, Mexico, with her journalist husband, Sebastián, and her eight-year-old son, Luca. Lydia runs a bookstore and one day befriends a charming customer. However, Javier is revealed to be the kingpin of a drug cartel. Sebastián publishes a profile exposing the crimes of Javier, who then orders the slaughter of Sebastián and his family. Lydia and Luca escape the massacre and attempt to enter the United States illegally, taking a treacherous trip via the route known as La Bestia north of Mexico City.

"Nearing the end of his life, Enzo, a dog with a philosopher's soul, tries to bring together the family, pulled apart by a three year custody battle between daughter Zoe's maternal grandparents and her father Denny, a race car driver."

"On a summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment's flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives..."

Somewhere in South America, a lavish birthday party is being held. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different..."

"When Raquel Cepeda almost lost her estranged father to heart disease, she feared she'd never know the truth about her ancestry. With time running out, she decided to use the science of ancestral DNA testing to excavate everything she could about her genetic history. Bird of Paradise is the story of that remarkable quest to uncover the truth..."

"A former prison guard and talented fiddler returns to his Montana hometown to bury his wife and confront the inmate who, twenty years ago, held him hostage during a prison riot."

"From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author comes "a magnificent, bighearted” novel about small-town America that follows Louis Charles Lynch (“Lucy”) and his wife of forty years as they prepare to embark on a vacation to Italy."

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Oscar, an overweight Dominican from a New Jersey ghetto, dreams of becoming a writer and finding love, but a Fuku curse has haunted his family for generations, and may well prevent him from attaining his desires."

"Presents the stories of six Japanese mail-order brides whose new lives in early twentieth-century San Francisco are marked by backbreaking migrant work, cultural struggles, children who reject their heritage, and the prospect of wartime internment."

"A history of hip-hop cites its origins in the post-civil rights Bronx and Jamaica, drawing on interviews with performers, activists, gang members, DJs, and others to document how the movement has influenced politics and culture."

"En su nueva memoria, la clamada autora de Cuando era puertorriqueña continua su cautivante crónica describiendo su salida de los barrios de Brooklyn a los teatros de Manhattan."

"In her new memoir, the acclaimed author of When I Was Puerto Rican continues the riveting chronicle of her life."

"Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus's curse of seeing the future distracts him from being and doing his best, but when he sees his little brother Isaiah's imminent death, he races against time, death, and circumstances to save him."

"In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Angs are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother - abused by the family for failing to birth a boy - finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother because they view them as useless mouths to feed. "

"Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter. Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story..."

"A coming-of-age story of unparalleled power, Drown introduces an unforgettable narrator--Yunior, the haunted, brilliant young man who tracks his family's precarious journey from the barrios of Santo Domingo to the tenements of industrial New Jersey, and their epic passage from hope to loss to something like love."

"Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life..."

"The astonishing saga of polar explorer Ernest Schackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as "Time" magazine put it, "defined heroism". Alfred Lansing's scrupulously researched and brilliantly narrated book--with over 200,000 copies sold--has long been acknowledged as the definitive account of the "Endurance's" fateful trip."

"A love story that unfolds in a world being irrevocably transformed by migration. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet--sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, thrust into premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city..."

"A historical thriller by the Pulitzer Award-winning author that tells the riveting story of the Klan's rise to power in the 1920s, the cunning con man who drove that rise, and the woman who stopped them."

"follows several members of an American family, the Berglunds, as well as their close friends and lovers, as complex and troubled relationships unfold over many years."

"A stunning and life-affirming memoir about surviving a willfully impoverished, eccentric and severely misguided family. The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities."

"Sixty years after a book's publication, its author remembers his lost love and missing son, while a teenage girl named for one of the book's characters seeks her namesake, as well as a cure for her widowed mother's loneliness."

The House of Broken Angels is an epic family saga helmed by patriarch Big Angel. In the novel, the entire De La Cruz clan gathers for the final birthday party Big Angel is throwing for himself, at home in San Diego, as he nears the end of his struggle with cancer and reflects on his long and full life.
But when Big Angel's mother, Mama America, dies herself as the party nears, he must plan her funeral as well. There will be two family affairs in one weekend: a farewell double-header.

"In the 1960s, political tension forces the García family away from Santo Domingo and towards the Bronx. The sisters all hit their strides in America, adapting and thriving despite cultural differences, language barriers, and prejudice. But Mami and Papi are more traditional, and they have far more difficulty adjusting to their new country. Making matters worse, the girls--frequently embarrassed by their parents--find ways to rebel against them."

"The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums in a memoir as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. It captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right."

"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope."

Henrietta Lacks, known to scientists as HeLa was a poor Southern tobacco farmer. Her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for medical research and have been bought and sold by the billions.The story of the Lacks family is part of the dark history of medical experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of."

"A story based on real events which tells the life and death of three revolutionary sisters in the Dominican Republic, told by a surviving fourth. The Mirabal Sisters join the opposition to the Trujillo dictatorship in the 1950s, suffering imprisonment and torture while their men watch powerless. They are released, then one night their jeep is ambushed..."

"n April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild."

Venice. 1704. In this city of splendor, desperation and destitution are never far away. At the Ospedale della Pietà, home for abandoned orphan girls, eight-year-old Anna Maria is just one of the three hundred girls growing up within the Pietà's walls – but she already knows she is different. Obsessive and gifted, she is on a mission to become Venice’s greatest violinist and composer, and in her remarkable world of color and sound, it seems like nothing with stop her.

The Island of Sea Women is set on the beautiful island of Jeju in Korea. Young-sook and Mi-ja are best friends from very different backgrounds. They begin working for the diving collective of their village which is a group of only women divers led by the mother of Young-sook. As new divers, Young-sook and Mi-ja begin a life of duty and excitement led by women who engage in dangerous physical work while their men are in charge of caring for the children. The Island of Sea Women introduces the dramatic history of the fierce female divers of Jeju Island.

"In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades."

"Dana, a modern-day Black woman, is celebrating her birthday with her husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back again and again to protect Rufus and ensure that he will father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Dana's sojourns become more dangerous until it is uncertain whether her life will end before it has even begun."

"Mary Karr looks back through younger eyes to exorcise her demons: a mad, puritanical grandmother; a vast inheritance squandered in one year flat; endless emptied bottles; and the darknesses inflicted on an eight-year-old girl. Explodes with antic, wit, stripped of self-pity. Miraculously, it makes a journey into joy."

"College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran -- and a convicted murderer. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl's conviction. But as he digs deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher..."

"Despite the fact that she has fallen in love with a young man, Tita, the youngest of three daughters born to a tyrannical rancher, must obey tradition and remain single and at home to care for her mother. A tall-tale, fairy-tale, soap opera romance, Mexican cookbook, and home-remedy handbook all rolled into one."

"Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church -- the only available shelter from the rain -- and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life."

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Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years."

"This is the tale of family, memory, love, and living told by 14-year-old Susie Salmon, who is already in heaven. Through the voice of a precocious teenage girl, Susie relates the awful events of her death and builds out of her family's grief a hopeful and joyful story."

"Who is Lucie Walker? Even Lucie herself can't answer that question after she comes to, confused and up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay. Back home in Seattle, she adjusts to life with amnesia, growing unsettled by the clues she finds to the selfish, carefully guarded person she used to be. Will she ever fall in love with her handsome, kindhearted fiancé, Grady? Can he devote himself to the vulnerable, easygoing Lucie 2.0, who is so unlike her controlling former self?"

"Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. Enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. Romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable."

"On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever."

"Community is the beating heart of this fresh, memorable novel, with an omniscient narrator and dozens of characters living in [fictional] Neawanaka, a small coastal Oregon town. The fantastical blends with the natural elements in this shimmering tapestry of smalltown life that profits from the oral traditions of the town's population of Native Americans and Irish immigrants. Those intrigued by the cultural heritage of the Pacific Northwest will treasure every lyrical sentence."

"Anna is not sick, but by age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- but is beginning to question who she truly is. She has always been defined in terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves."

"Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world -- conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. The Namesake brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations."

"Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what it means to be black in America."

"As a child, Kathy--now 31--lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood--and about their lives now."

In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through Texas, giving readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.
In Wichita Falls, he agrees to deliver a young orphan to relatives in San Antonio.
Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has again been torn away from the only home she knows.
Their 400-mile journey proves difficult and dangerous. Johanna tries to escape at every opportunity and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet the two lonely survivors begin to trust each other.

"Toru, a quiet and serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman."

"At the turn of the 20th century in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a gentle solitary orchardist, Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots. Then two feral, pregnant girls and armed gunmen set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect but to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past."

"Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to 'aging out' out of the foster care system. A community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life -- answers that will ultimately free them both."

"In Holt, Colorado, widower Louis Waters is initially thrown when the widowed Addie Moore suggests that they spend time together, in bed, to stave off loneliness. "No, not sex," she clarifies. "I'm talking about getting through the night. And lying warm in bed, companionably." Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades."

"In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer. He soon becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects, until one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young woman."

The novel opens with a snapshot: Kath, before her death, at an unknown gathering, holding hands with a man who is not her husband. The photograph is in an envelope marked "DON'T OPEN - DESTROY." But Kath's husband does not heed the warning, embarking on a journey of discovery that reveals a tight web of secrets: within marriages, between sisters, and at the heart of an affair. Kath, with her mesmerizing looks and casual ways, moves like a ghost through the memories of everyone who knew her - and a portrait emerges of a woman whose life cannot be understood without plumbing the emotional depths of the people she touched.

"A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance. Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek's father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge."

"Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups."

"Shortly before World War II, a Chinese man, sent to Japan to recover from tuberculosis, meets a lovely Japanese girl and four older residents, in a story of passion and sacrifice."

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During the summer of 1964 in rural South Carolina, a young girl is given a home by three black, beekeeping sisters. As she enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, she discovers a place where she can find the single thing her heart longs for most."

"Hidden in the heart of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel. Daniel is allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth about Julian Carax, and to save those he left behind. A page-turning exploration of obsession in literature and love."

"She's Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. Hilarious and deeply moving, it explores the territory that lies between men and women, examines changing friendships, and rejoices in the power of family. Told in Boylan's voice, She's Not There is about a person finally revealing a complex secret. As James evolves into Jennifer in scenes that are tender and witty, a marvelously human perspective emerges on issues of love, sex, and the relationship between our physical and intuitive selves."

"A young man, leaves his family for a contemplative life, then, restless, discards it for one of the flesh. He conceives a son, but bored and sickened by lust and greed, moves on again. Near despair, Siddhartha comes to a river where he hears a unique sound. This sound signals the true beginning of his life-- the beginning of suffering, rejection, peace, and, finally, wisdom.

"When a frontier baron known as the Commodore orders Charlie and Eli Sisters, his hired gunslingers, to track down and kill a prospector named Herman Kermit Warm, the brothers journey from Oregon to San Francisco, and eventually to Warm's claim in the Sierra foothills, running into a witch, a bear, a dead Indian, a parlor of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers."

"After dispatching a pistol-packing intruder from his home with the help of a stuffed Marlin head, Mick Stranahan can't deny that someone is out to get him. His intruder carries no I.D., and as a former Florida state investigator, he knows there are plenty of potential culprits. His long list of enemies includes a hit man, a personal injury lawyer of billboard fame, a notoriously irritating TV journalist, and a fumbling plastic surgeon..."

"When Javier Zamora was nine, he traveled unaccompanied by bus, boat, and foot from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. This is his memoir of his nine-week odyssey that nearly ended in calamity on multiple occasions. While Solito is Javier's story, it's also the story of millions of others who have risked so much to come to this country. "

"In the summer of 1987 in Swift River Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere. Diamond is the only Black person in all of Swift River. Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can finally move on, but when Diamond receives a letter from a relative she's never met key elements of Pop's life are uncovered, and she is introduced to two generations of African American Newberry women. A story of first friendships, family secrets, and finding the courage to let go, Swift River is a story about how history shape."

"Follows a Viet Cong agent as he spies on a South Vietnamese army general and his compatriots as they start a new life in 1975 Los Angeles."

"J.R. Moehringer grew up listening for a voice: the sound of his missing father, a disc jockey who disappeared before J.R. spoke his first words. As a boy, he would press his ear to a radio, straining to hear the keys to his own identity. His mother was his world, his anchor, but he needed something else, something he couldn't name. So he turned to the bar on the corner. A portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and a touching depiction of how some men remain lost boys."

"Depicts the heroic young men of Alpha Company as they carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear."

"In the winter of 1885, decorated war hero Colonel Allen Forrester leads an exploratory expedition up the Wolverine River and into the vast, untamed Alaska Territory. Leaving behind Sophie, his newly pregnant wife, Forrester records his extraordinary experiences in hopes that his journal will reach her if he doesn't return. As they map the territory and gather information on native tribes, whose understanding of the natural world is unlike anything they have ever encountered, Forrester and his team can't escape the sense that some great, mysterious force threatens their lives."

"This is the story of Robert Grainier, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century -- an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime."

"Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse : Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom"

"For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. Drawn to two young men from town, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world, until the unthinkable happens."

"Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era."