The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
Phaedra Patrick,2016
Mira
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778319337
Summary
In this poignant and curiously charming debut, a lovable widower embarks on a life-changing adventure.
Sixty-nine-year-old Arthur Pepper lives a simple life. He gets out of bed at precisely 7:30 a.m., just as he did when his wife, Miriam, was alive. He dresses in the same gray slacks and mustard sweater vest, waters his fern, Frederica, and heads out to his garden.
But on the one-year anniversary of Miriam's death, something changes
Sorting through Miriam's possessions, Arthur finds an exquisite gold charm bracelet he's never seen before. What follows is a surprising and unforgettable odyssey that takes Arthur from London to Paris and as far as India in an epic quest to find out the truth about his wife's secret life before they met—a journey that leads him to find hope, healing and self-discovery in the most unexpected places.
Featuring an unforgettable cast of characters with big hearts and irresistible flaws, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is a joyous celebration of life's infinite possibilities. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Phaedra Patrick studied art and marketing and has worked as a stained glass artist, film festival organizer and communications manager. She has won numerous prizes for her short stories and now writes full time. She lives in the UK with her husband and son. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
[E]vokes whimsy and poignancy.... [An] outward journey is also a journey within.... This is a sweet story with an almost magical, but never saccharine denouement, as a newly whole Arthur Pepper emerges.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Tender, insightful, and surprising.... [Arthur Pepper] will instantly capture the hearts of readers who loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, The Little Paris Bookshop, and The Red Notebook.
Library Journal
How well can you know a person, even a person you've loved and lived with for decades? This is the question posed by Phaedra Patrick's gentle, funny and wistful first novel... You have to read the book.
BookPage
Patrick's debut novel tells a sweet and poignant story about marriage, grief, and memory. Readers will find bumbling, earnest Arthur utterly endearing.
Booklist
Nothing otherworldly happens in this feel-good debut novel, yet the story...has the quality of a fable.... [E]ach bad turn in the book comes wrapped in a teachable moment; each cloud has an unmistakable silver lining.... [R]elentlessly upbeat...[and] as cozy and fortifying as a hot cup of tea on a cold afternoon.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
The Atomic Weight of Love
Elizabeth J. Church, 2016
Algonquin Books
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781616204846
Summary
In her sweeping debut novel, Elizabeth J. Church takes us from the World War II years in Chicago to the vast sun-parched canyons of New Mexico in the 1970s as we follow the journey of a driven, spirited young woman, Meridian Wallace, whose scientific ambitions are subverted by the expectations of her era.
In 1941, at seventeen years old, Meridian begins her ornithology studies at the University of Chicago. She is soon drawn to Alden Whetstone, a brilliant, complicated physics professor who opens her eyes to the fundamentals and poetry of his field, the beauty of motion, space and time, the delicate balance of force and energy that allows a bird to fly.
Entranced and in love, Meridian defers her own career path and follows Alden west to Los Alamos, where he is engaged in a secret government project (later known to be the atomic bomb). In married life, though, she feels lost and left behind. She channels her academic ambitions into studying a particular family of crows, whose free life and companionship are the very things that seem beyond her reach.
There in her canyons, years later at the dawn of the 1970s, with counterculture youth filling the streets and protests against the war rupturing college campuses across the country, Meridian meets Clay, a young geologist and veteran of the Vietnam War, and together they seek ways to mend what the world has broken.
Exquisitely capturing the claustrophobic eras of 1940s and 1950s America, The Atomic Weight of Love also examines the changing roles of women during the decades that followed. And in Meridian Wallace we find an unforgettable heroine whose metamorphosis shows how the women’s movement opened up the world for a whole generation. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1956 (?)
• Where—Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA
• Education—B.A., University of New Mexico; J.D.,University of New Mexico
• Currently—lives in Los Alamos, New Mexico
Elizabeth J. Church was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Her father, a research chemist, was drafted out of Carnegie Mellon University, where he was pursuing his graduate studies, and was sent to join other scientists working in secret on the Manhattan Project. Church’s mother, a biologist, eventually joined her husband in Los Alamos.
While The Atomic Weight of Love is not their story, it is the story of many of the women who sacrificed their careers so that their husbands could pursue unique opportunities in scientific research. Along with other Los Alamos children, Church grew up in an environment that gave her ready access both to nature and to female teachers who had advanced degrees in mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology, and other disciplines.
Church practiced law for over thirty years, focusing on mental health and constitutional law issues. After circumstances taught her the brevity of life, she walked away from the law to pursue her original dream of writing.
She has written extensively for legal publications and scientific journals. Her short story "Skin Deep" won first prize in Literal Latté’s 2001 fiction contest, and "Lying with Dogs" was published in Natural Bridge in 2002. This is her first novel. (From the publishers.)
Book Reviews
As characters go, Meri is a little too passive, Alden too one-dimensional a domestic tyrant, and Clay too good to be true. Nonetheless, readers will enjoy following Meri’s long, vivid journey, which concludes in her 80s.
Publishers Weekly
Church’s debut will likely strike a chord, especially with women who find that not much has changed in our patriarchal society since Meri’s time, and that Meri’s story might well be their own. —Poornima Apte
Booklist
Church's debut novel explores the relationship between sacrifice and love. Set during World War II and the decades leading up to the Vietnam War, the novel follows Meridian Wallace as she transforms from a bright ornithologist-to-be studying at the University of Chicago into an unhappy housewife.... An elegant glimpse into the evolution of love and womanhood.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)
Alice & Oliver
Charles Bock, 2016
Random House
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400068388
Summary
An unflinching yet deeply humane portrait of a young family’s journey through a medical crisis, laying bare a couple’s love and fears as they fight for everything that’s important to them.
New York, 1993. Alice Culvert is a caring wife, a doting new mother, a loyal friend, and a soulful artist—a fashion designer who wears a baby carrier and haute couture with equal aplomb.
In their loft in Manhattan’s gritty Meatpacking District, Alice and her husband, Oliver, are raising their infant daughter, Doe, delighting in the wonders of early parenthood.
Their life together feels so vital and full of promise, which makes Alice’s sudden cancer diagnosis especially staggering. In the span of a single day, the couple’s focus narrows to the basic question of her survival.
Though they do their best to remain brave, each faces enormous pressure: Oliver tries to navigate a labyrinthine healthcare system and handle their mounting medical bills; Alice tries to be hopeful as her body turns against her. Bracing themselves for the unthinkable, they must confront the new realities of their marriage, their strengths as partners and flaws as people, how to nourish love against all odds, and what it means to truly care for another person.
Inspired by the author’s life, Alice & Oliver is a deeply affecting novel written with stunning reserves of compassion, humor, and wisdom. Alice Culvert is an extraordinary character—a woman of incredible heart and spirit—who will remain in memory long after the final page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1969
• Where—Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
• Education—M.F.A., Bennington College
• Awards—Sue Kaufman Award; Silver Pen Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Charles Bock is an American writer whose debut 2008 novel Beautiful Children was selected by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year for 2008. The book also won the 2009 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, Alice & Oliver was published in 2016. He lives with his wife, Leslie Jamison, and daughter in New York City.
Bock was born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, which served as the setting for Beautiful Children. He comes from a family of pawnbrokers who've operated pawn shops in Downtown Las Vegas for more than thirty years. On his website, he reflects upon his upbringing as a source of inspiration for the novel:
Sometimes, when my siblings and I were little, my parents, for various reasons, used to have us stay in the back of the shop..... I’d sometimes stare out of the back of the store and watch the people in line and take in their faces. Lots of times my parents would be put in the position of having to tell these people that their wedding ring was only worth a fraction of what they’d paid for it, or that, say, the diamonds in that ring were brown and flawed. From the back of the store, I’d watch as the customers exploded and called my parents dirty Jews and cursed at them and threatened them at the top of their lungs. It’s impossible in situations like that not to feel for everybody involved—to be horrified, sure, but more than that, to be saddened by the spectacle, to want so much more than that out of life for everyone.
Bock earned a Master's of Fine Arts in fiction and literature from Bennington College and has taught fiction at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City.
Novels
Bock's first novel Beautiful Children, published in 2008, is about the interwoven lives of homeless teenage runaways, whose lives intersect in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is an unflinching tale of lost innocence.
Bock's second novel Alice & Oliver, published in 2016, was inspired by the death of his first wife, Diana Colbert, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2009. Following a pair of bone marrow transplants, Diana died in December 2011, three days before their daughter's third birthday. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/5/2016.)
See the author's interview with Tom Perrotta.
Book Reviews
Alice & Oliver conveys the experience of cancer treatment with such grim immediacy that some readers may wonder whether they want to subject themselves to it.... Alice and Oliver are also skillfully portrayed, but we are held at emotional arm’s length from them and discouraged from wallowing in voyeuristic grief. [Bock's]...restraint is commendable, even if, at times, it gives the novel a slightly abstract air.... Alice & Oliver has flaws considerably less important than its tough-minded commitment to truth-telling and to honoring the complexities, contradictions and even the cruelties of people under extreme duress.
Wendy Smith - Washington Post
Even more than the meticulous details of drugs, treatments and side effects, Bock’s tender portrayal of [his characters] in all their desolation gives [Alice & Oliver] its ring of truth.... I loved this novel.
Marion Winik - Newsday
Alice & Oliver shows that, even in a situation that’s about as terrible as it can be, there can still exist happiness, surprise, and life, that strange strong spirit that’s with us until the end.
Boston Globe
Alice & Oliver is the most honest, unsentimentally powerful novel about cancer that I’ve ever read.
Michael Christie - Toronto Globe & Mail
The novel’s power is in its two characters’ messy negotiation of their fears, errors and shifting affections.... [Charles] Bock offers a forceful reminder that there are plenty of roiling emotions underneath that till-death-do-us-part.
Los Angeles Times
A rewarding reading experience...a testament to the resilience of humans and our willingness to forgive.
San Francisco Chronicle
This hauntingly powerful novel follows a family’s fight for survival in the face of illness. A stirring elegy to a marriage.
Oprah Magazine
[A] heart-wrenching story of a young couple whose lives change when Alice gets diagnosed with cancer...a refreshingly unsentimental look at the vicious disease.
Entertainment Weekly
[An] articulate excavation of the emotional, physical, and intellectual effects of terminal illness.... Though it could have been worthwhile, [the case history] device peters out before it can add much depth. But overall, this book overcomes the standard clichés to provide a beautiful, complex portrait of a family in crisis.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Informed by his own wife's illness and death, Bock's novel is a searingly honest, wryly funny, deeply loving tribute to those facing mortality and struggling through the maze of health insurance and treatment options while trying to hold on to their humanity. —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The illness doesn't interrupt humanity; humanity grows from the illness, which is a narrative strategy that makes the book one of the most moving in recent memory. A stunning book about Alice and Oliver, yes, but also about the way illness shatters us all.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for Alice and Oliver … then take off on your own:
1. Alice and Oliver is based on events in Charles Bock's own life. Does that knowledge affect how you experienced the novel? (See Bock's interview with Tom Perrotta.)
2. Talk about Alice and Oliver's life in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan before cancer disrupted everything. How would you describe it — charmed, perhaps? What else …?
3. Follow-up to Question 2: How does the couple's life change after Alice's diagnosis. Talk about their battles with chemotherapy, the frustrations with the healthcare bureaucracy, even the strange reactions of friends.
4. How does cancer affect the couple's relationship? How do the two adjust to the falling away of the very things that attracted them to one another? How might you adjust (or how have you had to adjust) to the tragedy of a loved one with a life-threatening disease?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Once the cancer takes over, who suffers more — Alice or Oliver?
6. Of the various case studies included in the novel—the man whose jaw is surgically removed, for instance, or the 2nd-grader who falls out of remission—which one most affects you?
7. Does the wealth of specific details regarding chemotherapy and the logistics of bone-marrow transplants feel overdone in the novel … or appropriate?
8. No one in Alice's orbit is left unchanged once her disease strikes. Talk about how her battle with cancer reshapes those closest to her.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks)
LaRose
Louise Erdrich, 2016
HarperCollins
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062277022
Summary
Winner, 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award
In this literary masterwork, Louise Erdrich wields her breathtaking narrative magic in an emotionally haunting contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture.
North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence—but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he’s hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger.
When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor’s five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich.
The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux’s five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux’s wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty’s mother, Nola.
Horrified at what he’s done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition—the sweat lodge—for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. “Our son will be your son now,” they tell them.
LaRose is quickly absorbed into his new family. Plagued by thoughts of suicide, Nola dotes on him, keeping her darkness at bay. His fierce, rebellious new “sister,” Maggie, welcomes him as a coconspirator who can ease her volatile mother’s terrifying moods.
Gradually he’s allowed shared visits with his birth family, whose sorrow mirrors the Raviches’ own. As the years pass, LaRose becomes the linchpin linking the Irons and the Raviches, and eventually their mutual pain begins to heal.
But when a vengeful man with a long-standing grudge against Landreaux begins raising trouble, hurling accusations of a cover-up the day Dusty died, he threatens the tenuous peace that has kept these two fragile families whole.
Inspiring and affecting, LaRose is a powerful exploration of loss, justice, and the reparation of the human heart, and an unforgettable, dazzling tour de force from one of America’s most distinguished literary masters. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 7, 1954
• Where—Little Falls, Minnesota, USA
• Education—A.B., Dartmouth College; M.A., Johns Hopkins
• Awards—National Book Award; National Book Critics Circle Awards (2); Nelson Algren Prize
• Currently—lives in Minnesota
Karen Louise Erdrich is an author of some 20 novels, as well as poetry, short stories, and children's books. She has some Native American ancestry and is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.
In 1984, Erdrich won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her debut novel, Love Medicine. In 2009, her novel The Plague of Doves was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and three years later, in 2012, she won the National Book Award for Round House.
Erdrich is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The eldest of seven children, Erdrich was born to Ralph and Rita Erdrich in Little Falls, Minnesota. Her father was German-American while her mother was French and Anishinaabe (Ojibwa). Her grandfather Patrick Gourneau served as a tribal chairman for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents taught at the Bureau of Indian Affairs school.
She attended Dartmouth College in 1972-1976, earning an AB degree and meeting her future husband, the Modoc anthropologist and writer Michael Dorris. He was then director of the college’s Native American Studies program. Subsequently, Erdrich worked in a wide variety of jobs, including as a lifeguard, waitress, poetry teacher at prisons, and construction flag signaler. She also became an editor for The Circle, a newspaper produced by and for the urban Native population in Boston. Erdrich graduated with a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University in 1979.
In the period 1978-1982, Erdrich published many poems and short stories. It was also during this period that she began collaborating with Dorris, initially working through the mail while Dorris was working in New Zealand. The relationship progressed, and the two were married in 1981. During this time, Erdrich assembled the material that would eventually be published as the poetry collection Jacklight.
In 1982, Erdrich's story "The World’s Greatest Fisherman" was awarded the $5,000 Nelson Algren Prize for short fiction. This convinced Erdrich and Dorris, who continued to work collaboratively, that they should embark on writing a novel.
Early Novels
In 1984, Erdrich published the novel Love Medicine. Made up of a disjointed but interconnected series of short narratives, each told from the perspective of a different character, and moving backwards and forward in time through every decade between the 1930s and the present day, the book told the stories of several families living near each other on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation.
The innovative techniques of the book, which owed a great deal to the works of William Faulkner but have little precedent in Native-authored fiction, allowed Erdrich to build up a picture of a community in a way entirely suited to the reservation setting. She received immediate praise from author/critics such as N. Scott Momaday and Gerald Vizenor, and the book was awarded the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award. It has never subsequently been out of print.
Erdrich followed Love Medicine with The Beet Queen, which continued her technique of using multiple narrators, but surprised many critics by expanding the fictional reservation universe of Love Medicine to include the nearby town of Argus, North Dakota. Native characters are very much kept in the background in this novel, while Erdrich concentrates on the German-American community. The action of the novel takes place mostly before World War II.
The Beet Queen was subject to a bitter attack from Native novelist Leslie Marmon Silko, who accused Erdrich of being more concerned with postmodern technique than with the political struggles of Native peoples.
Erdrich and Dorris’ collaborations continued through the 1980s and into the 1990s, always occupying the same fictional universe.
Tracks goes back to the early 20th century at the formation of the reservation and introduces the trickster figure of Nanapush, who owes a clear debt to Nanabozho. Erdrich’s novel most rooted in Anishinaabe culture (at least until Four Souls), it shows early clashes between traditional ways and the Roman Catholic Church.
The Bingo Palace updates but does not resolve various conflicts from Love Medicine: set in the 1980s, it shows the effects both good and bad of a casino and a factory being set up among the reservation community. Finally, Tales of Burning Love finishes the story of Sister Leopolda, a recurring character from all the former books, and introduces a new set of white people to the reservation universe.
Erdrich and Dorris wrote The Crown of Columbus, the only novel to which both writers put their names, and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, credited to Dorris. Both of these were set away from the Argus reservation.
Domestic Life
The couple had six children, three of them adopted. Dorris had adopted the children when he was single. After their marriage, Erdrich also adopted them, and the couple had three daughters together. Some of the children had difficulties.
In 1989 Dorris published The Broken Cord, a book about fetal alcohol syndrome, from which their adopted son Reynold Abel suffered. Dorris had found it was a widespread and until then relatively undiagnosed problem among Native American children because of mothers' alcohol issues. In 1991, Reynold Abel was hit by a car and killed at age 23.
In 1995 their son Jeffrey Sava accused them both of child abuse. Dorris and Erdrich unsuccessfully pursued an extortion case against him. Shortly afterward, Dorris and Erdrich separated and began divorce proceedings. Erdrich claimed that Dorris had been depressed since the second year of their marriage.
On April 11, 1997, Michael Dorris committed suicide in Concord, New Hampshire.
Later Writings
Erdrich’s first novel after divorce, The Antelope Wife, was the first to be set outside the continuity of the previous books. She has subsequently returned to the reservation and nearby towns, and has produced five novels since 1998 dealing with events in that fictional area. Among these are The Master Butchers Singing Club, a macabre mystery which again draws on Erdrich's Native American and German-American heritage, and The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. Both have geographic and character connections with The Beet Queen.
Together with several of her previous works, these have drawn comparisons with William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels. The successive novels have created multiple narratives in the same fictional area and combined the tapestry of local history with current themes and modern consciousness.
In The Plague of Doves, Erdrich has continued the multi-ethnic dimension of her writing, weaving together the layered relationships among residents of farms, towns and reservations; their shared histories, secrets, relationships and antipathies; and the complexities for later generations of re-imagining their ancestors' overlapping pasts. The novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009.
Erdrich's 2010 book, Shadow Tag, was a departure for her, as she focuses on a failed marriage.
Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Ojibwa and Chippewa). Erdrich also has German, French and American ancestry. One sister, Heidi, publishes under the name Heid E. Erdrich; she is a poet who also resides in Minnesota. Another sister, Lise Erdrich, has written children's books and collections of fiction and essays. For the past few years, the three Erdrich sisters have hosted annual writers workshops on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
The award-winning photographer Ronald W. Erdrich is one of their cousins. He lives and works in Abilene, Texas. He was named "Star Photojournalist of the Year" in 2004 by the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors association. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The name LaRose is inscribed many times across the cover of this fine novel by Louise Erdrich. And we do meet a boy named LaRose shortly after the book begins. He is but five years old. He is an Ojibwa boy who walks between two worlds, just beginning to sense the spirit world. There have been other LaRoses in his family and their stories are deftly woven into this novel. READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
Incandescent…Erdrich has always been fascinated by the relationship between revenge and justice, but…. LaRose comes down firmly on the side of forgiveness. Can a person do the worst possible thing and still be loved? Erdrich’s answer is a resounding yes.
Mary Gordon - New York Times Book Review
[Erdrich] is, like Faulkner, one of the great American regionalists, bearing the dark knowledge of her place, as he did his. She is by now among the very best of American writers.
Philip Roth - New York Times
I’m one of those Erdrich enthusiasts who nonetheless balks at her penchant for embellishing stories with traditional Indian sorcery. In this case, LaRose is the fourth to bear his name, all of whom were women healers able to fly and defy other laws of physics.... [Still, over the years, Erdrich] has presented us with a splendid panorama of Native-American life unprecedented in our literary history, forever changing Americans’ sense of who they are and what they have been.
Dan Cryer - Newsday
Remarkable…As the novel draws to a conclusion, the suspense is ratcheted up, but never at the expense of Erdrich’s reflective power or meditative lyricism…One of Erdrich’s finest achievements.
Boston Globe
A masterly tale of grief and love…Erdrich never missteps…The recurring miracle of Erdrich’s fiction is that nothing feels miraculous in her novels. She gently insists that there are abiding spirits in this land and alternative ways of living and forgiving that have somehow survived the West’s best efforts to snuff them out.
Washington Post
[Erdrich] has laid out one of the most arresting visions of America in one of its most neglected corners, a tableaux on par with Faulkner, a place both perilous and haunted, cursed and blessed.
Chicago Tribune
[A] sad, wise, funny novel, in which [Erdrich] takes the native storytelling tradition that informs her work and remakes it for the modern world, stitching its tattered remnants into a vibrant living fabric.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
The rewards of LaRose lie in the quick unraveling and the slow reconstruction of these lives to a moment when animosities resolve, like shards of glass in a kaleidoscope, into clarity and understanding...Told with constraint and conviction.
Los Angeles Times
You’re going to want to take your time with this book, so lavish in its generational scope, its fierce torrent of wrongs and its luxurious heart. Anyway, you may have no choice, as you fall under the spell of a master… Like Toni Morrison, like Tolstoy, like Steinbeck, Erdrich writes her characters with a helpless love and witnesses them with a supreme absence of judgment…[a] beautiful novel.
San Francisco Chronicle
Erdrich suffuses the book with her particular sort of magic—an ability to treat each character with singular care, weaving their separate journeys flawlessly.... All the while, she adds new depth to timeless concepts of revenge, culture, and family.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) Erdrich spins a powerful, resonant story with masterly finesse...explor[ing] the quest for justice and the thirst for retribution.... Erdrich introduces [a] mystical element seamlessly...[and those] magical aspects are lightened by scenes of everyday life.... [A] memorable and satisfying ending.
Publishers Weekly
Set in 1999 North Dakota, this new work concludes a trilogy begun with the Anisfield-Wolf Award winner The Plague of Doves and the National Book Award winner The Round House.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) The radiance of this many-faceted novel is generated by Erdrich’s tenderness for her characters…magnificent…a brilliantly imagined and constructed saga of empathy, elegy, spirituality, resilience, wit, wonder, and hope that will stand as a defining master work of American literature for generations to come.
Booklist
(Starred review.) After accidentally shooting his friend and neighbor's young son, a man on a Native American reservation subscribes to "an old form of justice" by giving his own son, LaRose, to the parents of his victim.... [A] meditative, profoundly humane story... this novel is...about the emotions men need, but rarely get, from one another.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What are the intended effects of Emmaline and Landreaux’s traditional act of giving LaRose to the Raviches? In what ways does it achieve these or not? What are the costs?
2. What is the nature of the two marriages at the center of the novel, the Irons and the Raviches? How are they similar or different?
3. Consider the first LaRose. What were her particular strengths? What was essential to her ability to survive the neglect and abuse from her mother Mink, Mackinnon, and the mission school?
4. In what ways does Wolfred help and balance LaRose before and throughout their marriage?
5. What common qualities does each LaRose possess?
6. When Nola accepts LaRose from the Irons, she’s not sure if she does so for the profound beauty of the gesture or because it will so deeply punish them. Is she obligated to respond in any particular way to such a gesture?
7. Revenge is sought by various characters throughout the novel: Maggie’s defense of LaRose, LaRose’s fighting the Fearsome Four, Romeo’s longstanding behavior toward Landreaux. What is revenge? What is it intended to accomplish? In what ways does it help or harm? Is it, as Romeo believes, a form of justice?
8. Mrs. Peace, the fourth LaRose and Emmaline’s mother, abstains from any romantic relationships after her “cruel, self-loving, and clever” husband, Billy Peace, dies, saying that, “he had taught her what she needed to know about men.” What does she mean? Where in the novel is a man able to show kindness or selflessness?
9. Consider the girls in both families: The “Iron Maidens,” Snow and Josette, and Maggie Ravich. What is each like? What are their particular strengths? What do they provide for each other?
10. How does each person in the novel respond to such profound grief and loss? Which response seems the healthiest?
11. What’s the relationship between suffering and anger in the novel? What is the value of anger? What’s the healthiest response to it?
12. What does Father Travis provide all involved with the loss of Dusty? What are his own struggles? How do they affect his ability to help his community?
13. What’s the nature of technology as it’s presented in Peter Ravich’s concern about Y2K and Snow and Josette’s obsession with “robot/cyborg” movies?
14. How do the Irons work to balance a connection with their traditional wisdom and rituals with a rapidly changing modern world?
15. At one point Randall explains that the medicine his people did in the past was not magic, but “beyond ordinary understanding now.” What does he mean? Why is it important to not see such healing as magic?
16. Consider the image of cake as it appears throughout the novel. What are its various connotations? How is this complicated by Nola’s obsessive making of cakes or Peter’s concern about the eating of sugar?
17. How does Nola’s deep, suicidal depression affect the members of her family? What aids in her healing?
18. Mrs. Peace, thinking about Frank Baum’s genocidal policy and all the cultural loss and destruction it caused, says the resulting loneliness “sets deep in a person,” and takes four generations to heal. Why might it take this long? What is it about the fourth LaRose that suggests the nature of such healing?
19. To what extent is some kind of disconnection necessary to survive such cultural and personal tragedy? What are the various ways characters disconnect throughout the novel? Where are key moments of reconnection?
20. To what extent is Romeo’s vengeful and self-destructive behavior understandable given his past? In addition to his physical injury, what were important moments of harm or loss? What helps explain his improvement over time?
21. When Landreaux suggests escaping from the boarding school, Romeo sees in his eyes an “opacity of spirit.” What does this mean? Where else do people struggle with such a thing in the novel?
22. Romeo considers the strong painkillers he takes as “the only mercy in this world.” How do other characters use drugs or alcohol? When is it necessary or valuable, when is it unhealthy?
23. Romeo, revealing his often hidden or overlooked intelligence, tries to explain to Hollis about “intergenerational trauma.” What is this? What is necessary for it to be healed?
24. In the kitchen with his mother and sisters, LaRose says “what we used for TV in the olden times was stories.” What is the importance of storytelling in a family or culture? How has modern TV and media changed the nature and content of stories? What are the effects of this?
25. Throwing their dandelion forks into the woods, LaRose says to Maggie, “Let’s stop being grown-ups.” In what ways have the children in each family demonstrated maturity and understanding to compensate for the adults? What might explain such strength and insight in young people?
26. At Hollis’ graduation party, many of the people “spoke in both languages” as they enjoyed cake. In addition to language, what are the best ways to stay connected to valuable traditions?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Most Wanted
Lisa Scottoline, 2016
St. Martin's Press
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250010131
Summary
Donor 3319 Profile:
Tall. Blonde. Blue eyes.
Medical Student.
Wanted for Serial Murder.
Christine Nilsson and her husband, Marcus, are desperate for a baby. Unable to conceive, they find themselves facing a difficult choice they had never anticipated.
After many appointments with specialists, endless research, and countless conversations, they make the decision to use a donor.
Two months pass, and Christine is happily pregnant. But one day, she is shocked to see a young blond man on the TV news being arrested for a series of brutal murders—and the blond man bears an undeniable and uncanny resemblance to her donor.
Delving deeper to uncover the truth, Christine must confront a terrifying reality and face her worst fears.
Riveting and fast-paced with the depth of emotionality that has garnered Lisa Scottoline legions of fans, Most Wanted poses an ethical and moral dilemma: What would you do if the biological father of your unborn child was a killer? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—July 1, 1955
• Where—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• Awards—Edgar Award
• Currently—lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Lisa Scottoline is the New York Times bestselling author and Edgar award-winning author of some two dozen novels and several nonfiction books. She also writes a weekly column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Chick Wit" which is a witty and fun take on life from a woman's perspective.
These stories, along with many other never-before-published stories, have been collected in four books including their most recent, Have a Nice Guilt Trip, and the earlier, Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim, Best Friends, Occasional Enemies, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog, which has been optioned for TV, and My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.
Lisa reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and her reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America and has taught a course she developed, "Justice and Fiction" at The University of Pennsylvania Law School, her alma mater.
Lisa is a regular and much sought after speaker at library and corporate events. Lisa has over 30 million copies of her books in print and is published in over 35 countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Lisa's books have landed on all the major bestseller lists including the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and Look Again was named "One of the Best Novels of the Year" by the Washington Post, and one of the best books in the world as part of World Book Night 2013.
Lisa's novels are known for their emotionality and their warm and down-to-earth characters, which resonate with readers and reviewers long after they have finished the books. When writing about Lisa’s Rosato & Associates series, Janet Maslin of the New York Times applauds Lisa's books as "punchy, wisecracking thrillers" whose "characters are earthy, fun and self-deprecating" and distinguishes her as having "one of the best-branded franchise styles in current crime writing."
Recognition
Lisa's contributions through her writing has been recognized by organizations throughout the country. She is the recipient of the Edgar Award, the Mystery Writer's of America most prestigious honor, the Fun, Fearless, Fiction Award by Cosmopolitan Magazine, and named a PW Innovator by Publisher's Weekly.
Lisa was honored with AudioFile's Earphones Award and named Voice of the Year for her recording of her non-fiction book, Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog. The follow up collection, My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space has garnered both Lisa and her daughter, Francesca, an Earphones Award as well. In addition, she has been honored with a Distinguished Author Award from Scranton University, and a "Paving the Way" award from the University of Pennsylvania, Women in Business.
Personal
Lisa's accomplishments all pale in comparison to what she considers her greatest achievement, raising, as a single mom, her beautiful (a completely unbiased opinion) daughter, an honors graduate of Harvard, author, and columnist, who is currently working on her first novel.
Lisa believes in writing what you know, and she puts so much of herself into her books. What you may or may not learn about Lisa from her books is that...
♦ she is an incredibly generous person
♦ an engaging and entertaining speaker
♦ a die-hard Eagles fan
♦ a good cook.
♦ She loves the color pink, her Ipod has everything from U2 to Sinatra to 50 Cent, she is proud to be an American, and nothing makes her happier than spending time with her daughter.
Dogs
Lisa is also a softie when it comes to her furry family. Nothing can turn Lisa from a professional, career-minded author, to a mushy, sweet-talking, ball-throwing woman like her beloved dogs. Although she has owned and loves various dog breeds, including her amazing goldens, she has gone crazy for her collection of King Charles Spaniels.
Lisa first fell in love with the breed when Francesca added her Blehneim Cavalier, Pip, to the mix. This prompted Lisa to get her own, and she started with the adorable, if not anatomically correct (Lisa wrote a "Chick Wit" column about this), Little Tony, her first male dog. Little Tony is a black and tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
But Lisa couldn't stop at just one and soon added her little Peach, a Blehneim King Charles Cavalier. Lisa is now beyond thrilled to be raising Peach’s puppies, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson, and for daily puppy pictures, be sure to follow Lisa on Facebook or Twitter. Herding together the entire pack is Lisa’s spunky spit-fire of a Corgi named Ruby. The solitude of writing isn't very quiet with her furry family, but she wouldn't have it any other way.
Cats
Not to be outshined by their canine counterparts, Lisa's cats, Vivi and Mimi, are the princesses of the house, and have no problem keeping the rest of the brood in line. Vivi is a grey and white beauty and is more aloof than her cuddly, black and white partner, Mimi.
When Lisa’s friend and neighbor passed, Lisa adopted his beloved cat, Spunky, a content and beautiful ball of fur.
Chickens
Lisa loves the coziness of her farmhouse, and no farm is complete without chickens. Lisa has recently added a chicken coop and has populated it with chicks of different types, and is overjoyed with each and every colorful egg they produce. Watching over Lisa's chicks are her horses, which gladly welcomed the chicks and all the new excitement they bring. (Author bio adapted from the author's website.)
Visit the author's website.
Follow Lisa on Facebook.
Book Reviews
In novel after novel, Lisa Scottoline has proven herself a master of stories that combine familial love—especially that of mothers for their children—with nail-biting stories of spirited everywomen bent on finding the truth. Her new novel, Most Wanted, demonstrates again her skill with this kind of domestic suspense tale.
Washington Post
This is a potboiler of a book, crammed full of agonizing choices confronting appealing, relatable characters. Scottoline has penned more hardboiled tales, but never one as heartfelt and emotionally raw, raising her craft to the level of Judith Guest and Alice Hoffman. Most Wanted is a great thriller and a gut-wrenching foray into visceral angst that is not to be missed.
Providence Journal
The plot is strongest when focusing on the trials of a couple desperate for a child and the psychological ramifications of using a sperm donor. But too often the story sinks to the melodramatic, unredeemed by Scottoline’s usual verve for character.
Publishers Weekly
Scottoline has mastered the art of writing the story of an average mom forced into extraordinary action. Her relatable characters inspire empathy.... As has come to be expected, this is a page-turner that will satisfy the Scottoline faithful. —Madeline Dahlman, Deerfield P.L., IL
Library Journal
As usual, the complications aren't quite up to the level of the startling hook.... The fairy-tale ending calls for some convenient coincidences and changes of heart, but Scottoline's legion of fans will be too relieved to object.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The struggle to have a child can strain a marriage. What is your overall impression of Christine and Marcus’s marriage? How did it evolve over the course of the book? Do you think they would have had problems in their marriage even if they did not have to deal with infertility? If so, why?
2. A large percentage of couples face fertility problems for a variety of issues, and turn to modern medicine in order to have a child. Was there anything that you learned about the process that surprised you? Had you ever heard of Marcus’s condition? What are your feelings about the entire process? Some view helping infertile couples conceive as "playing God." Do you agree or not? Do you think this is generational? Faced with Christine and Marcus’s situation, what option do you think you would have chosen?
3. Through Lisa’s research for Most Wanted, she discovered that although there is extensive testing of egg donors, including psychological evaluations, the same was not true of sperm donors. Why do you think the standard practices and regulations are so lopsided? Do you think this is reflective of the double standard between men and women? What responsibility do you think the sperm banks should have to their customers? How much follow-up do you think they should be required to do with their donors? Do they owe it to their customers to report concerns, after the fact? Isn’t it also true that there are costs associated with such monitoring? And do you think infertile women and men view their medical condition differently?
4. Couples may be so understandably vulnerable by the time they rely on medical intervention to have a baby. Do you think the industry is regulated enough to protect these people from unscrupulous business practices? What should people do to protect themselves? With the legalization of same-sex marriage, the use of sperm and egg donors is sure to increase. Do you think the industry is prepared for the increase in demand?
5. What rights do you think the child has in this situation? Interestingly, the US allows anonymous sperm donations, but the UK requires disclosure to the offspring. What do you think about that difference? Although the donor provides a detailed history, do you think that is enough information for the child? Would you want to meet your donor parent? If you used a donor, how would you feel about your child meeting the donor? At what age, if ever, would you tell your child? Some experts Lisa consulted said six years or even younger it’s the time to tell the child. Agree or disagree?
6. What do you think about nature vs. nurture? Do you think that a tendency toward violence is inherited through DNA, or created by the environment to which a person is exposed? What are your thoughts about the warrior gene? Do you think it is a real genetic indicator? With the amount of violence in today’s society, do you think children should be tested for it? If yes, under what circumstances, if no, why not? What would be the benefits of this and what would be the downside?
7. The competitive tension between Marcus and his father is palpable. In what ways do you think the competitiveness was positive for Marcus, and in what ways did it have a negative impact? Do you think it was a good idea or a bad idea for Marcus not to partner with his father in his firm? In what ways are Marcus and his father similar, and in what ways are they different. Who did you like better, and why? Do you think mothers and daughters compete the same way that fathers and sons do? If not, do you think it’s all about the testosterone?
8.Like most mothers, Christine will do anything for her child, and won’t take no for an answer. What is the craziest thing you have done for your child, or what is the craziest thing your parent has ever done for you?
9. Often the allure of committing a crime is the notoriety it brings. Christine poses as someone looking to write a book about the serial killer. Although there are laws in most states that regulate felons making money off book, movie, and TV deals, the attention is still appealing to the criminal. What can we do as a society to reduce the amount of fame that comes with committing a crime. Why do you think we often focus more on the criminal than the victims? How much of the responsibility lies with the media for the stories they report, and how much of the responsibility lies with the general public which supports the sensationalization of these stories.
10. In the end, Most Wanted is the story of a family, although one in crisis. Every family faces challenges that can make them stronger, or divide them. What challenges has your family faced, and how did it change your family? In looking back, what would you have done differently, and what would you do the same?
(Questions from author's website.)