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Second Glance
by Jodi Picoult
Published 2003 by Atria Books
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780743454506
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Jacket Notes:
When a man attempts to sell a piece of his land, the local tribe of Abenaki Indians rises up in protest, claiming the land is a burial ground of their ancestors. Picoult's most engrossing work, "Second Glance" considers the things that come to haunt people, literally and figuratively, and asks whether love persists across time, or in spite of it.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/31/2003
It is August in Comtosook, Vt., yet suddenly the temperature fluctuates wildly, rose petals mysteriously fall like snow, patches of land are completely frozen and roiling garter snakes cover the ground. Suspense and the supernatural are artfully interwoven in this 10th novel by Picoult (Perfect Match, etc.), in which a man desperately seeks to join his fiancee in death, and a 1930s eugenics project comes back to haunt a small town in Vermont. Ever since his beloved Aimee was killed in a car accident, Ross Wakeman has deliberately put himself at risk, hoping to die. When nothing works, and a job with a paranormal investigator brings him no closer to Aimee, he moves in with his sister, Shelby, in Comtosook. As chance would have it, strange phenomena are plaguing the town, and Ross is drawn into an investigation of a piece of land that local Abenaki Indians claim is an old burial ground. In the process, he meets lovely Lia Beaumont, who has some mysterious connection to sinister goings-on 70 years before in Comtosook. Many more characters are essential to the elaborate, engrossing plot, including Spencer Pike, once a eugenics expert and now a tormented old man in a nursing home; Meredith Oliver, a genetic diagnostician with an uncanny resemblance to Lia Beaumont; and Ross's eight-year-old nephew, Ethan, who suffers from a condition that makes him allergic to sunlight. Picoult's ability to bring them all vividly to life is remarkable. Firmly rooting her otherworldly tale in everyday reality, she produces a spellbinding suspense novel offering insight into the human spirit and the depths of true love. (Apr.) Forecast: With this foray into the fantastic, Picoult proves there's little she can't do. National advertising and a 14-city author tour should help propel the book onto bestseller lists.
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Hawaii
by James A. Michener
Published 2002 by Random House Trade
Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780375760372
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Jacket Notes:
In "Hawaii, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Michener weaves the classic saga that brought Hawaii's epic history vividly alive to the American public on its initial publication in 1959, and continues to mesmerize even today.
The volcanic processes by which the Hawaiian Islands grew from the ocean floor were inconceivably slow, and the land remained untouched by man for countless centuries until, little more than a thousand years ago, Polynesian seafarers made the perilous journey across the Pacific and discovered their new home. They lived and flourished in this tropical paradise according to their ancient traditions and beliefs until, in the early nineteenth century, American missionaries arrived, bringing a new creed and a new way of life to a Stone Age society. The impact of the missionaries had only begun to be absorbed when other national groups, with equally different customs, began to migrate in great numbers to the islands. The story of modern Hawaii, and of this novel, is one of how disparate peoples, struggling to keep their identity yet live with one another in harmony, ultimately joined together to build America's strong and vital fiftieth state.
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Feather Crowns
by Bobbie Ann Mason
Published 1993 by HarperCollins Publishers
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780060167806
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Jacket Notes:
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 07/12/1993
In her longest, most ambitious work to date, Mason chronicles the spiritual and emotional journey taken by Christie Wheeler, a Kentucky farmer's wife who gives birth to quintuplets in the spring of 1900. The evocative physical detail, tart dialogue, wry humor and striking ability to capture the rich complexity of working people's lives that distinguished Mason's earlier books ( In Country ; Shiloh and Other Stories ; etc.) are linked here to a more overtly philosophical quest for meaning that marks this novel as an exciting extension of the writer's already considerable gifts. The first two sections sketch the apocalyptic climate into which the quintuplets have been born: at the turn of the century, a terrible earthquake is predicted, and the pregnant Christie joins other uneasy souls at a camp meeting in Reelfoot, where a handsome preacher warns of the judgment to come. That judgment turns out to be a terrifying deluge of attention that readers will recognize as the early stirrings of modern celebrity culture: hordes of people take the train up from Memphis just to gawk at the infants, and in one quietly shocking moment, a man enters through a window while Christie is nursing. The circus-like atmosphere infects the Wheelers as well; Christie's husband James is convinced by his Uncle Wad to charge admission as a means of paying back the couple's debt to him. After all five babies die halfway through the story, the estranged husband and wife seek to place blame and find a reason for their loss, a search symbolized by the ``feather crowns' found in the infants' pillow, variously considered by folk legend to be signs of impending death or proof that the deceased are in heaven. Ultimately, although Christie and James have different ideas about the significance of their ordeal, they reaffirm their love. In the novel's beautiful closing section, a first-person monologue set in 1963, the elderly Christie reveals that painful metaphysical questions she asked in 1900 helped her return to daily life with renewed understanding and joy. ``I don't aim to live out my days all hunched up over my memories,' she says. ``I want to watch the sun come up and hear a hen cackle over a new-laid egg and feel a kitten purr . . . Things like that are absolutely new ever time they happen.' 60,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; 18-city author tour. ( Sept. )
01/01/1994 REVIEW: School Library Journal
YA-Early in the cold dark spring of 1900, when, according to apocalyptic prediction, the world is about to be destroyed by earthquake, a miracle occurs instead. In the backwoods of Kentucky, a farmwife gives birth to five healthy, well-formed babies-quintuplets, the first recorded in the U.S. From then on her life, and her family's, are never the same, as the world troops to her door to witness this grand spectacle. Or is it a freak show? This is a book about love, the journey of life, and the unsought miracles that transform human existence. Its voice and ambiance are authentic; appreciative readers will savor the lovely old words and the quaint ideas of another time, along with the unlovely, harsh practices of superstition, ignorance, and greed. Christie Wheeler's story is historical fiction at its warmest, fiercest, and most intimate. This moving novel will enrich any student's knowledge of American folklore, folklife, and social history.-Marya Andreen, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
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Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Published 2001 by Metropolitan Books
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780805063882
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Jacket Notes:
MILLIONS OF AMERICANS WORK FULL-TIME, year-round, for poverty-level wages. In 1998, Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that a job -- any job -- could be the ticket to a better life. But how does anyone survive, let alone prosper, on six to seven dollars an hour? To find out, Ehrenreich left her home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find, and accepted whatever jobs she was offered as a woefully inexperienced homemaker returning to the workforce. So began a grueling, hair-raising, and darkly funny odyssey through the underside of working America.Moving from Florida to Maine to Minnesota, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, a hotel maid, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide, and a Wal-Mart sales clerk. Very quickly, she discovered that no job is truly "unskilled", that even the lowliest occupations require exhausting mental and muscular effort. She also learned that one job is not enough; you need at least two if you intend to live indoors.Nickel and Dimed reveals low-wage America in all its tenacity, anxiety, and surprising generosity -- a land of Big Boxes, fast food, and a thousand desperate stratagems for survival. Read it for the smoldering clarity of Ehrenreich's perspective and for a rare view of how "prosperity" looks from the bottom. You will never see anything -- from a motel bathroom to a restaurant meal -- quite the same way again.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/14/2001
In contrast to recent books by Michael Lewis and Dinesh D'Souza that explore the lives and psyches of the New Economy's millionares, Ehrenreich (Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, etc.) turns her gimlet eye on the view from the workforce's bottom rung. Determined to find out how anyone could make ends meet on $7 an hour, she left behind her middle class life as a journalist except for $1000 in start-up funds, a car and her laptop computer to try to sustain herself as a low-skilled worker for a month at a time. In 1999 and 2000, Ehrenreich worked as a waitress in Key West, Fla., as a cleaning woman and a nursing home aide in Portland, Maine, and in a Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, Minn. During the application process, she faced routine drug tests and spurious "personality tests"; once on the job, she endured constant surveillance and numbing harangues over infractions like serving a second roll and butter. Beset by transportation costs and high rents, she learned the tricks of the trade from her co-workers, some of whom sleep in their cars, and many of whom work when they're vexed by arthritis, back pain or worse, yet still manage small gestures of kindness. Despite the advantages of her race, education, good health and lack of children, Ehrenreich's income barely covered her month's expenses in only one instance, when she worked seven days a week at two jobs (one of which provided free meals) during the off-season in a vacation town. Delivering a fast read that's both sobering and sassy, she gives readers pause about those caught in the economy's undertow, even in good times. (May) Forecast: Based on an article Ehrenreich originally wrote for Harper's magazine, and supported by an author tour, this book will draw significant review attention and solid sales
01/01/2002 REVIEW: School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Between 1998 and 2000, Ehrenreich spent about three months in three cities throughout the nation, attempting to "get by" on the salary available to low-paid and unskilled workers. Beginning with advantages not enjoyed by many such individuals-she is white, English-speaking, educated, healthy, and unburdened with transportation or child-care worries-she tried to support herself by working as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing-home aide, and a Wal-Mart employee. She discovered that her average salary of $7 per hour couldn't even provide the necessities of life (rent, transportation, and food), let alone the luxury of health coverage. Her account is at once enraging and sobering. In straightforward language, she describes how labor-intensive, demeaning, and controlling such jobs can be: she scrubbed floors on her hands and knees, and found out that talking to coworkers while on the job was considered "time theft." She describes full-time workers who sleep in their cars because they cannot afford housing and employees who yearn for the ability to "take a day off now and then-and still be able to buy groceries the next day." In a concluding chapter, Ehrenreich takes on issues and questions posed before and during the experiment, including why these wages are so low, why workers are so accepting of them, and what Washington's refusal to increase the minimum wage to a realistic "living wage" says about both our economy and our culture. Mandatory reading for any workforce entrant.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
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