Book picks similar to
Truth by Jacqueline Sheehan


historical-fiction
fiction
non-fiction
african-american-experience

Mama's Bank Account


Kathryn Forbes - 1943
    This bestselling book inspired the play, motion picture, and television series I Remember Mama.

The Refugees


Viet Thanh Nguyen - 2017
    From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.

John Crow's Devil


Marlon James - 2005
    With language as taut as classic works by Cormac McCarthy, and a richness reminiscent of early Toni Morrison, Marlon James reveals his unique narrative command that will firmly establish his place as one of today's freshest, most talented young writers.In the village of Gibbeah--where certain women fly and certain men protect secrets with their lives--magic coexists with religion, and good and evil are never as they seem. In this town, a battle is fought between two men of God. The story begins when a drunkard named Hector Bligh (the "Rum Preacher") is dragged from his pulpit by a man calling himself "Apostle" York. Handsome and brash, York demands a fire-and-brimstone church, but sets in motion a phenomenal and deadly struggle for the soul of Gibbeah itself. John Crow's Devil is a novel about religious mania, redemption, sexual obsession, and the eternal struggle inside all of us between the righteous and the wicked.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe


Fannie Flagg - 1987
    Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women-of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth, who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder.

Those Bones Are Not My Child


Toni Cade Bambara - 1999
    Having elected its first black mayor in 1980, Atlanta  projected an image of political progressiveness and prosperity. But between September 1979 and June 1981, more than forty black children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered throughout "The City Too Busy to Hate."        A separated mother of three holding down several jobs, Zala Spencer has managed to survive on the margins of a flourishing economy until she awakens the morning of Sunday, July 20, 1980, to find her teenage son Sonny missing. As the hours turn into days, Zala realizes that Sonny is among the many cases of missing children just beginning to attract national attention. Growing increasingly disillusioned with the authorities, who respond to Sonny's disappearance with cold indifference, Zala and her estranged husband embark on a desperate search. Through the eyes of a family seized by anguish and terror, we watch a city roiling with political, racial, and class tensions.

Dead Wake: : The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson | Summary & Analysis


aBookaDay - 2015
    This review follows along the chronological storyline of the book, and includes special attention to the extensive detail offered by the author. The summary is followed by an analysis of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. Larson weaves this story by offering alternating views of the captain of the Lusitania, the commander of the sub that sank it, the passengers aboard the ship, British naval intelligence officers, and President Wilson. The general story line is chronological and the various perspectives alternate throughout the telling. Two central thesis are developed throughout the book. The first is that the author is sympathetic to the captain of the Lusitania who was somewhat maligned after the event by those who sought to blame the sinking of the ship on his incompetence. The second concerns the suggestion that there was deliberate negligence on the part of British intelligence and leadership who recognized strategic advantage in the ship being attacked in terms of its potential to draw Americans into the war as allies. The author uses rich archival detail to support both claims. Larson is both an accomplished journalist and historical novelist. He has written four New York Times bestselling books on subjects ranging from serial killers to hurricanes. He has written for The Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine as a staff journalist. He has been a contributing author to The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. His academic background includes a bachelors in Russian history, language and culture from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Masters in journalism from Columbia University. Download your copy today! for a limited time discount of only $2.99! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. © 2015 All Rights Reserved

Love and War 1


John Jakes - 1984
    The young would clash on the bloody battlefields of Bull Run and Fredericksburg, while in intrigue-ridden Washington and Richmond strong-willed men and beautiful women would defend their principles with their lives...or satisfy illicit cravings with schemes that could destroy friends and enemies alike. This surging drama is the second part of the trilogy that includes NORTH AND SOUTH and HEAVEN AND HELL. "Craftsmanship nears artistry....A coherent and penetrating vision of the seamy underside of war." (Richmond Times-Dispatch)

A Piece of the World


Christina Baker Kline - 2017
    He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden." 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.

The Chaperone


Laura Moriarty - 2012
    Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever. For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive. Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers,  and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.

Strange Fruit


Lillian E. Smith - 1944
    It captured with devastating accuracy the deep-seated racial conflicts of a tightly knit southern town. The book is as engrossing and incendiary now as the day it was written.

Enemies: A War Story


Kenneth Rosenberg - 2018
    From there, they traveled across the Pacific to Japan, and then on to occupied France, landing in that country on the very day that Germany declared war on the United States. Their epic adventure had suddenly taken a dark turn. Wolfgang Wergin and Herbie Haupt were American citizens, though German by birth. Both had lived in America since the age of five, yet now they were given a choice by German officials. They could join a Nazi sabotage mission heading back to the United States to blow up aluminum factories, or they could be drafted into the German army and sent to the Russian front. One of these young men chose the first option, and one the second. Only one of them would survive. While this fragment of history is mostly forgotten today, the episode became one of the most sensational news stories of its time, garnering intense national interest. "Enemies: A War Story" is a fictionalized version of this true story, sticking as close to the facts as possible. This is a novel that raises challenging questions about the meanings of patriotism, justice, and American morality during difficult times.

Paris


Edward Rutherfurd - 2013
    As he did so brilliantly in London: The Novel and New York: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd brings to life the most magical city in the world: Paris. This breathtaking multigenerational saga takes readers on a journey through thousands of years of glorious Parisian history.

I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive


Steve Earle - 2011
    In 1963, ten years after Hank's death, Doc himself is wracked by addiction. Having lost his license to practice medicine, his morphine habit isn't as easy to support as it used to be. So he lives in a rented room in the red-light district on the south side of San Antonio, performing abortions and patching up the odd knife or gunshot wound. But when Graciela, a young Mexican immigrant, appears in the neighborhood in search of Doc's services, miraculous things begin to happen. Graciela sustains a wound on her wrist that never heals, yet she heals others with the touch of her hand. Everyone she meets is transformed for the better, except, maybe, for Hank's angry ghost—who isn't at all pleased to see Doc doing well.  A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is also a marvelous novel in its own right, a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland


Jim DeFede - 2002
    airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held on board for nearly 24 hours while security checked all of the baggage, they were greeted with a feast prepared by the townspeople. Local bus drivers who had been on strike came off the picket lines to transport the passengers to the various shelters set up in local schools and churches. Linens and toiletries were bought and donated. A middle school provided showers, as well as access to computers, email, and televisions, allowing the passengers to stay in touch with family and follow the news.Over the course of those four days, many of the passengers developed friendships with Gander residents that they expect to last a lifetime. As a show of thanks, scholarship funds for the children of Gander have been formed and donations have been made to provide new computers for the schools. This book recounts the inspiring story of the residents of Gander, Canada, whose acts of kindness have touched the lives of thousands of people and been an example of humanity and goodwill.

Trinity


Leon Uris - 1976
    From the acclaimed author who enthralled the world with Exodus, Battle Cry, QB VII, Topaz, and other beloved classics of twentieth-century fiction comes a sweeping and powerful epic adventure that captures the "terrible beauty" of Ireland during its long and bloody struggle for freedom. It is the electrifying story of an idealistic young Catholic rebel and the valiant and beautiful Protestant girl who defied her heritage to join his cause. It is a tale of love and danger, of triumph at an unthinkable cost—a magnificent portrait of a people divided by class, faith, and prejudice—an unforgettable saga of the fires that devastated a majestic land... and the unquenchable flames that burn in the human heart.