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In The Book of Lost Friends, Lisa Wingate conquers another fascinating, yet obscure, piece of American history. This is another dual-timeline novel by Wingate. It follows Hannie, a freed slave, as she travels through post-war Texas in search of her people and attempts to return home to Louisiana, and Benny, a modern-day teacher, struggling to inspire her students until she unearths a history that links them to Hannie and much more.
One Day in December is Josie Silver’s debut novel, released in 2018. It was featured in Reese’s Book Club and has gone on to be a New York Times bestseller. To give you a quick idea of whether or not you’ll like the novel, consider if you liked Bridget Jones’s Diary or Love Actually. If you did, then you’ll love this novel, which has similar themes as both books.
If you don’t know about it, there has been some controversy about the publication of The Giver of Stars soon after the publication of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek. Personally, I loved them both and think they are both worth a read! And, if you read them both, it will make for a lively book club discussion I can promise you that. You can dedicate one meeting to each book with a bonus meeting to the comparison of the two and you’ll have plenty to talk about.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek tackles two unique subjects in history that you may not be familiar with–the Pack Horse Librarians and the Blue People of Kentucky. The Pack Horse Library was part of Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration in 1930s. The blue-skinned people of Kentucky were a real group of people born with blue skin who lived in the mountains of Appalachia.
The Giver of Stars is a very plot-driven novel, so there aren’t a lot of instances where the characters are still enough to linger over a meal. There are several meals at the Van Cleve’s, but the food is either not mentioned or the scene is not pleasant. I try to choose food pairings that evoke a pleasant memory of the book.
