Star Branch Adult Book Group 2008

Submitted by laura on June 21, 2007 - 12:18pm.

" No two persons ever read the same book." Edmund Wilson

January 19th

My Antonia by, Willa Cather

Antonia works as a servant for her neighbors after her father's death, elopes, and then returns to marry a Bohemian farmer.

February 16th

Straight Man by, Richard Russo

The author of Nobody's Fool chronicles a singularly eventful week in the life of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., a once-promising novelist and now the middle-aged chairman of a university English department in hilarious disarray.

March 15th

Maisie Dobbs by, Jacqueline Winspear

Private detective Maisie Dobbs must investigate the reappearance of a dead man who turns up at a cooperative farm called the Retreat that caters to men who are recovering their health after World War I.

April 19th

The Professor and the Madman by, Simon Winchester

Describes how more than ten thousand definitions were submitted for the first Oxford English Dictionary from Dr. W. C. Minor, an American Civil War criminal whose life of genius and insanity make this true story both fascinating and unique.

June 21st

This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

The author chronicles his youth growing up in Montana, reflecting upon an earlier time and a different lifestyle--uncomplaining, unquestioning, and accepting of the western land with all its hardships and beauty

July 19th

Enemy Women by Paulett Jiles

Follows Adair, the daughter of modest farmers in the Missouri Ozarks, who is wrongly accused of enemy collaboration by the Union militia, as she falls in love with her interrogator and embarks on a perilous journey to find her family.

August 16th

Antonement by, Ian McEwan

Three children lost their innocence--as the sweltering summer heat bears down on the hottest day in 1935--and their lives are changed forever.

September 20th

Ida B: and her plans to maximize fun, avoid disater, and (possibly) save the world. by, Katherine Hannigan

In Wisconsin, fourth-grader Ida B spends happy hours being home-schooled and playing in her family's apple orchard, until her mother begins treatment for breast cancer and her parents must sell part of the orchard and send her to public school.

October 18th

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Two women come to Chandrapore, India, and their lack of understanding of the culture causes one of them to make an unjust accusation.

November 15th

Mayflower: a story of courage, community and war by, Nathaniel Philbrick

The story of the Pilgrims is much more than the well-known tale of piety and sacrifice; it is a 55-year epic. The Mayflower's religious refugees arrived in Plymouth Harbor during a period of crisis for Native Americans, as disease spread by European fishermen devastated their populations. Initially the two groups maintained a fragile working relationship. But within decades, New England erupted into King Philip's War, a savage conflict that nearly wiped out colonists and natives alike, and forever altered the face of the fledgling colonies and the country that would grow from them. Philbrick has fashioned a fresh portrait of the dawn of American history--dominated right from the start by issues of race, violence, and religion.

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