BHIA Book Club

Established in 2000 where a group meets every 4 – 6 weeks to discuss books.  Barrington Books provides a discount to BHIA book club members.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

Thursday, August 22, 2019 @ Geri McCarthy, 4 Ledge Road

Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart. The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn, free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden, ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering development.

In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the history of her home, hoping that the local historical preservation society might take an interest and provide funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood.

A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial worries and the news that their elegant house is structurally unsound.

Brilliantly executed and compulsively listenable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred—whether family or friends—and in the strength of the human spirit.

The Water will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell

September TBD

This is an RWU read.  What if Atlantis wasn’t a myth but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. With each crack in the great ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica, and each tick upwards of Earth’s thermometer, we are moving closer to the brink of broad disaster.

By century’s end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world’s shores as our coasts become inundated and our landscapes transformed. From island nations to the world’s major cities, coastal regions will disappear. Engineering projects to hold back the water are bold and may buy some time. Yet despite international efforts and tireless research, there is no permanent solution–no barriers to erect or walls to build–that will protect us in the end from the drowning of the world as we know it.

The Water Will Come is the definitive account of the coming water, why and how this will happen, and what it will all mean. As he travels across twelve countries and reports from the front lines, acclaimed journalist Jeff Goodell employs fact, science, and first-person, on-the-ground journalism to show vivid scenes from what already is becoming a water world.

October TBD

To Christina Olson, the entire world was her family’s remote farm in the small coastal town of Cushing, Maine. Born in the home her family had lived in for generations, and increasingly incapacitated by illness, Christina seemed destined for a small life. Instead, for more than twenty years, she was host and inspiration for the artist Andrew Wyeth, and became the subject of one of the best known American paintings of the twentieth century.

As she did in her beloved smash bestseller Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline interweaves fact and fiction in a powerful novel that illuminates a little-known part of America’s history. Bringing into focus the flesh-and-blood woman behind the portrait, she vividly imagines the life of a woman with a complicated relationship to her family and her past, and a special bond with one of our greatest modern artists.

Told in evocative and lucid prose, A Piece of the World is a story about the burdens and blessings of family history, and how artist and muse can come together to forge a new and timeless legacy.

November TBD

A richly layered novel of love, ambition, and duplicity, set against the storied seascape of Newport, Rhode Island

A reckless wager between a tennis pro with a fading career and a drunken party guest–the stakes are an antique motorcycle and an heiress’s diamond necklace–launches a narrative odyssey that braids together three centuries of aspiration and adversity. A witty and urbane bachelor of the Gilded Age embarks on a high-risk scheme to marry into a fortune; a young writer soon to make his mark turns himself to his craft with harrowing social consequences; an aristocratic British officer during the American Revolution carries on a courtship that leads to murder; and, in Newport’s earliest days, a tragically orphaned Quaker girl imagines a way forward for herself and the slave girl she has inherited.

In The Maze at Windermere Gregory Blake Smith weaves these intersecting worlds into a brilliant tapestry, charting a voyage across the ages into the maze of the human heart.

American Girl: Scenes from a Small-Town Childhood by Mary Cantwell

December/January TBD

From New York Times editorial-board member and veteran columnist Cantwell, a memoir of growing up during the 1930’s and 40’s in the town of Bristol, Rhode Island. “I have come down with the Bristol Complaint,” Cantwell announces early in the book: “People who have the Bristol Complaint can never leave town. The elm trees snag them. So does the harbor and the wild roses and the history.” Cantwell does, of course, manage to leave town, but the town remains inside her, and, here, she brings it to her readers all the way back from its history of colonial immigrants and traders, of General LaFayette (who once camped there, but left when winter set in) and of “Philip, King of the Wampanoags” (the bones of whose people lie under the ground)–and on through the lives of her beloved grandparents, known as Ganny and Gampy (she still believes Gampy was once a bootlegger); of her own parents, Leo Cantwell and Mary Lonergan; and thus to the birth and growing up of Mary Lee Cantwell and her younger sister, Diana. Seldom have a town and its memoirist been more perfectly blended than they are here (“It was as if Bristol were a book I couldn’t put down,” says the author), and in her subtle and delicately told tales of being a young child, of getting polio, of remembering WW II, of learning the stark cruelties of social class, of struggling into adolescence, of finally graduating from high school and getting ready to leave home–in all of these, Cantwell embraces sentiment without ever becoming sentimental, and makes her words fall into place with a quiet perfection. “If I don’t get out of Bristol it will always be three o’clock in the afternoon,” she says; and yet, even so, amid much, much more, she remembers for us a long-ago afternoon with her high-school girlfriends when “we walked through air that was as silver as the bay.” Evocative, lovely, deeply felt, and mature personal writing about a past that’s gone

1. Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
2. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
3. Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
4. Gifts from the Sea by Ann Lingbergh
5. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
6. Doris Duke – any book related to her life
7. Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
8. All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg
9. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
10. Chocolat by Joanne Harris
11. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
12. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
13. A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie
14. While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
15. The Red Tent by Anita Diamont
16. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
17. Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding
18. Wish You Well by David Balducci
19. Plainsong by Kent Harof
20. Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
21. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
22. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
23. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
24. Bone Setter’s Daughter by Amy Tan
25. Waiting by Ha Jin
26. Vietnam – any fiction or non-fiction related book
27. Blessings by Anna Quindlan
28. In the Name of Salome by Julia Alvarez
29. Flying Cloud by David Shaw
30. Arrow Through the Heart by Deborah Heffernan
31. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
32. Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
33. The Prince of Providence by Mike Stanton
34. The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
35. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
36. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
37. Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
38. Nobody’s Fool by Richard Russo
39. The Big House by George Howe Colt
40. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
41. Sea Room by Norman Gautreau
42. The Last Boy by Robert Lieberman
43. Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik
44. Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler
45. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus
46. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
47. Two Souls Indivisible by James Hirsch
48. The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
49. I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson
50. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
51. This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff
52. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
53. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
54. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
55. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
56. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
57. Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani
58. The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
59. Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
60. Big Stone Gap Trilogy by Adriana Trigiani
61. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
62. If You Could See Me Now by Michael Mewshaw
63. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
64. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
65. Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards
66. Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell
67. Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
68. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
69. Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
70. Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
71. Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral by Kris Radish
72. A Woman’s Place: A Novel by Lynn Austin
73. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
74. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
75. The Faith Club by Idliby by Oliver Warner
76. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
77. Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
78. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
79. The Working Poor by David Shipler
80. Inheriting the Trade by Thomas DeWolf
81. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
82. Growing Up by Russell Baker
83. Crashing Through by Robert Kurson
84. any David Sedaris book by David Sedaris
85. Having Our Say by the Delany Sisters
86. Send Yourself Roses by Kathleen Turner
87. Molokai by Alan Brennert
88. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
89. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
90. The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon-Reed
91. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
92. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
93. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
94. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
95. Home by Marilynne Robinson
96. The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson
97. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
98. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
99. MagicTime by Doug Marlette
100. Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa
101. Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
102. One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
103. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
104. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet by Jamie Ford
105. The Widowers Tale by Julia Glass
106. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
107. The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
108. HELA Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
109. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
110. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
111. My Father’s Secret War by Lucinda Franks
112. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
113. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
114. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
115. Mudbound by Hillary Jordon
116. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
117. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
118. Blindspot: A Novel by Jane Kemensky & Jill Lepore
119. Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
120. Hawke’s Cove by Susan Wilson
121. Lots of Candles Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlan
122. The American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin
123. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
124. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
125. Defending Jacob by William Landay
126. The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb
127. Montana 1948 & Justice by Larry Watson
128. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
129. The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
130. Rules of Civility by Armor Towles
131. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevaliar
132. Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly
133. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
134. The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
135. We are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
136. Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah
137. The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes
138. Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation by Cokie Roberts
139. Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
140. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
141. The Circle by Dave Eggers
142. The Dinner by Herman Koch
143. The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
144. Wild by Cheryl Strayed
145. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
146. Empty Mansions by Bill Dedman
147. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
148. Stoner by John Williams
149. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kid
150. Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller
151. Mean Streak by Sandra Brown
152. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
153. Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
154. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
155. The Children Act by Ian McEwan
156. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
157. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
158. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
159. The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman
160. March by Geraldine Brooks
161. The Widow by Fiona Barton
162. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
163. Terminal City by Linda Fairstein
164. Still Life by Louise Penny
165. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
166. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
167. When Breathe Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
168. The Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
169. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
170. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
171. The Highlands by Bill Whelan
172. Rent Collector by Camron Wright
173. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
174. The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure
175. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
176. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
177. The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
178. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
179. When Books went to War by Molly Guptill Manning
180. Baby with the Bathwater by Christopher Durang (play)
181. Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
182. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
183. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
184. The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
185. The Betrayed by Maria Milot
186. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
187. Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
188. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
189. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
190. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
191. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
192. The Address by Fiona Davis
193. Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
194. The Water will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell
195. A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline
196. A Maze at WIndermere by Gregory Blake Smith
197. American Girl: Scenes fro a Small Town Childhood by Mary Cantwell