If you liked A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, you might like:
Spokane Valley Library Book Club selection for Wednesday, December 19 at 2pm. Everyone is welcome! |
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 | Baldacci, David | | Wish You Well | | Precocious 12-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives in the hectic New York City of 1940, when tragedy strikes, and she and her younger brother must go with their invalid mother to live on their great-grandmother’s farm in the Virginia mountains -- new landscape, her first true friend, and tragic, comic, and audacious adventures abound. |
|  | Burns, Olive Ann | | Cold Sassy Tree | | On July 5, 1906, scandal breaks in the small town of Cold Sassy, Georgia, when the proprietor of the general store, E. Rucker Blakeslee, elopes with Miss Love Simpson -- he’s barely three weeks a widower, and she is only half his age and a Yankee to boot, inspiring a whirlwind of local gossip. |
|  | Cisneros, Sandra | | House on Mango Street | | Esperanza Cordero is a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become -- told in a series of sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes joyous vignettes. |
|  | Forbes, Kathryn | | Mama’s Bank Account | | In this true story of a Norwegian immigrant family living in San Francisco in the early 1900s, stories center around the author’s mother -- shrewd but completely selfless, quiet, but oh, so stubborn, she certainly knows how to get things done in spite of insurmountable odds. |
|  | Hardy, Thomas | | Tess of the D’Ubervilles | | Born into a weak family, seduced by an unscrupulous admirer, and beset by a series of tragic coincidences, innocent and courageous Tess surrenders herself to the crushing force of fate with heartbreaking simplicity, in this clasic that was highly controversial when it was released in 1891. |
|  | Llewellyn, Richard | | How Green was My Valley | | As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth, when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley, in a gripping story that carries us through the hardships and triumphs that bring a family closer, and, at times, tear it apart. |
|  | McCourt, Frank | | Angela’s Ashes | | The memoirs of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants, and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland -- he endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors, yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness. |
|  | Smith, Betty | | Joy in the Morning | | In 1927, Brooklyn, Carl and Annie meet and fall in love, and travel to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law -- their first year together is much more difficult than they anticipated, and they come to realize that their greatest sources of strength, loyalty and love, will help them make it through. |
|  | Smith, Dodie | | I Capture the Castle | | 17-yer-old Cassandra and her family live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle where she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills -- by the time she fills three notebooks, and pens her final entry, she has captured not only the castle, but also the heart of the reader. |
|  | Walls, Jeannette | | The Glass Castle | | After spending years trying to hide her childhood experiences, Walls allows the story to spill out in this remarkable recollection of growing up -- from her current perspective as a contributor to MSNBC online, she remembers the poverty, hunger, jokes, and bullying, speaking with surprising affection about her parents and the strength of family ties. |
|  | West, Rebecca | | The Fountain Overflows | | Mrs. Aubry, a former concert pianistm struggles to keep her talented family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen ... still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected. |
|  | Wouk, Herman | | Marjorie Morningstar | | Marjorie is a pretty 17-year-old who has left the respectability of New York’s Central Park West to join the theater, and to live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, seeking love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer. |
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