One Book - One Lincoln Books

One Book – One Lincoln

Past Finalists and Selected Titles

2009

 People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

What is the What by Dave Eggers

The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks

The Color of Water by James McBride [305.8 McB]

The River of Doubt by Candice Millard [Biography Roosevelt]

2008

Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson [915.491 Mor]

 The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

2007

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert

The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean

 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan [973.917 Ega]

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

2006

Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos [Nebraska Author]

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

 The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson [364.152 Lar]

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls [B W1547]

2005

 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Green Mile by Stephen King

Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps by Ted Kooser [917.823 Koo] [Nebraska Author]

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

2004

 Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

Old Jules by Mari Sandoz [B Sa54s] [Nebraska Author]

2003

The Weight of Dreams by Jonis Agee [Nebraska Author]

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg

 Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

2002

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

 Plainsong by Kent Haruf [Nebraska Author]

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

Montana 1948 by Lawrence Watson

 – indicates the selected title for this year

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother - James McBride

This is a biography about the author's mother, Ruth McBride Jordan (born Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, raised Rachel Deborah Shilsky). She was born in Poland in 1921, and two years later her small family (father, mother, and younger sister) immigrated to the United States, settling in Virginia.

Her family was Jewish, and her father was sort of a Rabbi. He, however, was abusive to her as well as to her mother. She was white, and began dating an African American young man when she was a teenager. Through various difficulties, their relationship fell apart.

Over the years, her mother sent her away each summer to live with her mother's family in New York City. Only her grandmother really ever accepted her.

When she graduated from high school, she moved to New York City. A few years later her mother was admitted to a hospital in NYC, but Ruth was not allowed to visit because she was considered "dead" to the family who had already performed her Jewish death rites, by reciting the kaddish and sitting shiva for her.

During her time in NYC, she mete and fell in love with Dennis McBride, an African American man. They lived in a few very small apartments together, and had 8 children. During that time, Dennis also went to school and became a preacher, and they started their own church out of their home. They moved this church twice as it grew.

When Ruth was pregnant with their 8th child (the author of this book), Dennis died of lung cancer without a penny to his name. Ruth had lived the previous 15 years in African American neighborhoods with Dennis (who she insisted marry her when she converted to Christianity), and being accepted more than she ever was among her white peers. In fact, even before she met Dennis she hung out more in Harlem than anywhere else.

Awhile later she met another man, Mr. Jordan, who was older than her, and he asked to take her to a movie. She told him she liked to go to movies and so did her 8 children. He immediately stepped into their lives and cared for them as well as their biological father had. They had 4 more children together.

None of her 12 children knew anything about her past, but James became very interested when he realized she was white but he had never met any of his white family.

She would push aside his questions about her skin color and her past. Eventually, as an adult (and over many years) he pieced together her story and even brought her back to Virginia for the first time to see her only childhood friend.

Amazingly, Ruth's 12 children all graduated from college, many of them with graduate degrees. She always stressed the importance of Jesus Christ and school, which somehow helped every one of them find success.

The title of the book comes from a conversation James often had with his mother:

"When I asked her where she was from, she would say, 'God made me,' and change the subject. When I asked her if she was white, she'd say, 'No. I'm light-skinned,' and change the subject again."

Then he would ask her what color God is, and she would tell him, "The color of water."

The People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks

People of the Book is a wonderful story woven between reality and fiction.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The story focuses on an imagined past of the still extant Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest surviving Jewish illuminated texts.

The novel tells the fictional story of Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator who is responsible for restoring the Haggadah. The story alternates between sections set in the present day with Heath and other sections showing the history of the Haggadah.^[4]

Told in reverse chronological order, the story follows the Haggadah backward in time as it travels across Europe, from war-torn Sarajevo to the book's origins. It also explains such clues as missing silver clasps, preserved butterfly remnants, and various stains and spots, which are all eventually explained as part of the manuscript's long history."

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

Perhaps the best book I have read in awhile.
Characters (courtesy of wikipedia)

• Margaret Lea: a bookstore owner's daughter, whom Vida Winter asks to write her biography
• Vida Winter: a famous novelist who has eluded reporters as to her true past, and is now ready to reveal her secrets to Margaret
• Isabelle Angelfield: the younger of George Angelfield's two children and the mother of twins Emmeline and Adeline
• Charlie Angelfield: Isabelle's older brother, who harbours an obsessive passion for his sister
• Emmeline March: the less violent, more complacent twin
• Adeline March: the angrier, more aggressive twin
• Aurelius Love: a resident of the Angelfield area who befriends Margaret
• John Digence/"John-the-dig": Angelfield's longtime gardener
• The Missus: Angelfield's aged housekeeper
• Hester Barrow: governess to Adeline and Emmeline
• Dr. Maudsley: the town doctor who attempts to help the twins
• George Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's father, who ignores the former and dotes on the latter after his wife's death
• Mathilde Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's mother, who dies giving birth to Isabelle
• Judith: Vida Winter's housekeeper
• Dr. Clifton: Vida Winter's doctor

SPOILER ALERT: Contains summary of book.

Margaret is the adult daughter of the owner of a rare-book store in (London?) sometime near the present. As a young girl she was playing at home (alone for the first time) and discovered a small tin of important documents under her parents' bed, including 2 birth certificates for the same day: one is contains her name, the other is accompanied by a death certificate. Upon discovering that she had a twin, Moira, who died when the two were surgically separated, she begins to understand the incompleteness she has always felt.

Since that time, her relationship with her ailing mother has been strained, and her father is her boss, co-worker, and only friend. When Margaret's birthday rolls around, he always presents her with a store bought cake, a card signed "Love, Dad and Mum," and a few books he has picked up specifically for her at auction throughout the year - all within the bookshop where she both lives and works now. When she was a child, he would whisper "Happy Birthday" to her and play a game or two, while intermittently caring for her mother upstairs who always got one of her "headaches" on this day.

Margaret has begun writing brief biographies of obscure people. At the opening of the book, she is contacted by Vida Winter, the most prolific writer of novels at the time, in the form of a letter. Miss Winter, who has never told an honest story regarding her origins, is now dying and wishes Margaret to write her biography. After a great deal of complications, Margaret agrees. She temporarily moves into Miss Winter's home, and Miss Winter begins to tell her story, from the beginning, in pieces each day as time and her health permits.

Miss Winter begins by describing her family's gothic and mysterious past in their estate - Angelfield. Her grandmother died during childbirth, leaving her grandfather to grieve her with an infant daughter (Isabelle) and son (Charlie) basically orphaned. When he refuses to eat or leave the library, the housekeeper/cook (The Missus) decides to bring Isabel to him. He begins to dote on her unfailingly, and things seem to improve. However, Charlie has a terrible habit of torturing animals, and he soon begins to torture Isabel with her permission.

When their father dies, Isabelle is courted by and marries Mr. March, and they move away. Charlie is furious, and he begins taking advantage of multiple women from around Angelfield. Before long, Isabel returns home with twin baby girls after the death of her husband. She is mentally unsound, and stays at all times in her room, which leaves the twins to be raised by the Missus and John-the-Dig, the gardener. It soon becomes clear the twins are not like most children. They speak only to each other in a made-up twin language, and they create mischief throughout the area by stealing from people's kitchens and gardens. Eventually, they steal a pram with an infant inside because they want to play with it. When the mother turns around to find it missing, the whole neighborhood comes out to find her baby. They find the baby lying in the weeds, and this incident becomes the final straw.

The townspeople approach the doctor and ask him to intervene. He visits the home to assess the situation, and has Isabelle institutionalized. Charlie refuses to leave his room after that.

Dr. Maudsley decides to hire a governess for the girls. When Hester enters the home, she brings order and cleanliness with her. The Missus is quite elderly and unable to keep up with all of the housework since most of the staff has been fired over the years. Hester cleans the entire house, finds the keys to each room and locks those that are unused, and establishes regular meal times.

After a few months there, she consults with the doctor and they decide to separate Emmeline and Adeline. The doctor takes Adeline home with him, and Emmeline stays at Angelfield. Their experiment fails miserably - initially they are both silent, but soon Emmeline begins to improve. As Hester and Dr. Maudsley consult with one another one day, the doctor's wife catches them kissing. Hester leaves Angelfield immediately and the twins are reunited.

Not long after, Isabelle dies in the institution, and Charlie leaves the nursery for the first time and disappears. Vida finds him dead in an overgrown gazebo one day, having shot himself. She, however, keeps this information to herself to avoid having Angelfield taken over again by outsiders.

Soon after this, we discover that Ms. Winters is not one of the twins, but their nameless cousin, illegitimate child of Charlie. Her impoverished mother abandons her at Angelfield, and the househelp take her under their wings. Hester never realized there were 3 girls.

The Missus dies first, and John-the-dig is murdered when someone (Adeline) tampers with the latch on his ladder.

Before his death, John-the-dig hired a neighbor boy to work in the gardens, and this boy and Emmeline fall in love and have a child, although the boy leaves without knowing Emmeline is pregnant. When Emmeline begins to give all of her attention to her son, Adeline becomes jealous and violent, and tries to burn the child in the library fireplace. Vida finds the child and saves him, running him to a neighbor's house and leaving him on the doorstep. She then goes back to the house which is engulfed in flames and drags one of the twins out, believing it is Emmeline. She, however, never finds out which twin it is. The other twin perishes in the blaze.

Throughout the time she is gathering the story, Margaret makes a couple of visits to Angelfield, where she meets Aurelius. Eventually, they discover that Aurelius is Emmeline's son.

This story was filled with plenty of suspense and miraculous style.