Recommendations by Ellen Key

Here are a few suggestions for books for Oui Read to consider for next year. I you have others, add them to the list, and maybe we could decide at our upcoming meeting.

Ellen

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird is a stemwinder of a novel based on a historical character, a slave who was “liberated” by the Union and worked I the camp of General Phil Sheridan throughout the Civil War. Afterwards, disguised as a man, she joined the Buffalo Soldiers. She was funny, determined, and a powerful character. I rank the book up close to my standard, McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jessmyn Ward evokes the community and people where she grew up in rural Mississippi. She incorporates both the living and the dead into this poignant story. A must read.

Educated, A Memoir, Tara Westover is the personal and inspiring story of a girl raised in a family of survivalists in rural Idaho. Her parents didn’t trust anything related to the government, so she never attended school or saw a doctor. She was more or less home schooled by her mother. When she was high school age, she became determined to get an education and her story goes on from there. Quite a tale of a determined and smart women who had to ultimately choose between what she wanted for herself and the culture and people who raised her. Brilliant book.

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company and Addicted America, Beth Macy. I haven’t read this yet but have heard a lot about it, and it’s a subject that affects us all, one way or another. It’s the only book to fully chart the devastating opioid crisis in America. It’s been called a “harrowing deeply compassionate dispatch from the heart of a national emergency (NY Times) from a bestselling author and journalist who has lived through it.”

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens  For a classic, I recommend this timeless story by Dickens that includes iconic and colorful characters like the orphan Pip, who was raised by the eccentric Miss Haversham. Great Expectations was written in serial form and published in Dickens’s weekly magazine, All the Year Round. It’s filled with themes of wealth and poverty, love and rejection, ad the eventual triumph of good over evil. Something I could use right now.