Publisher: Grand Central
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/23/2012
ISBN-13: 9781455507214
ISBN-10: 1455507210

Quick-witted Edie Herzen learned as a child that food equals love and love equals food. Decades later, smart, successful lawyer Edie Middlestein is obese, diabetic, and slowly eating herself to death. A few years later she's facing a second surgery on her legs, she's been forced to retire, and her husband has left her; it's up to her two very different children (affable Benny, difficult Robin) to take control of her food obsession and save her life. Though there is much sadness, the story itself, told in episodes that jump around in time, has many moments of humor and offers a surprisingly warm depiction of a Midwestern Jewish family's dysfunction and devotion. 

Publisher: Hyperion
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 09/25/2012
ISBN-13: 9781401323141
ISBN-10: 1401323146

Real-life bank robber Willie Sutton had a career that spanned 40 years and netted him fans (the philosophical, colorful thief stole from banks, not people, and escaped from prison several times) and $2 million dollars in never-recovered funds. Pardoned on Christmas Eve in 1969, he granted an interview to a reporter that same day. This clever imagining of that interview traces the remarkable life of this mysterious man as he is driven across New York City, remarking upon and remembering the places that shaped him. A complex, layered man, Sutton reflects not only on the thrill of the heist but on his first love and the education he received in prison. A strong sense of time and place help make his story come alive.

Publisher: Graywolf Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/02/2012
ISBN-13: 9781555976262
ISBN-10: 1555976263

Written in 1992 and only now available in English, this quietly moving tale revolves around 13-year-old Audun Sletten, who protects himself by not getting involved -- not talking, never joining anything, and always wearing sunglasses. Recently moved to Oslo with his mother and sister to escape an abusive situation, Audun wants to be a writer, but the circumstances of his life suggest this may not be in the cards for him. Fans of author Per Petterson's precision and spare prose will enjoy this coming-of-age tale; they'll also recognize Audun's one friend, a young Arvid Jansen, whose adult life was depicted in I Curse the River of Time.

Publisher: Workman
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 10/23/2012
ISBN-13: 9781616201326
ISBN-10: 1616201320

Talented artist Claire Roth was tainted by scandal early in her career; she now survives by creating reproductions of famous paintings. So when a well-known art gallery owner offers to mount a show of her work if she agrees to forge a painting for him, she agrees...reluctantly. Unfortunately, she does too good a job, creating a forgery of a Degas painting that is so convincing that experts think it's the real thing -- a painting that was stolen in 1990. To share more of the twists and turns might ruin the story, but rest assured that the well-researched details of an artist's life and the complexities of art authentication and art forgery give color to this thrillingly suspenseful read.  

Publisher: Grove Press
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/28/2005
ISBN-13: 9780802141675
ISBN-10: 0802141676

In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, life on and around the Spokane Indian Reservation is pretty bleak for many of the Native Americans living there, but while despair and alcohol-fueled violence are endemic, many still attempt to hold on to valuable and meaningful traditions. Day-to-day life for the reservation's Indians is portrayed through a series of linked stories that convey both pathos and humor, and which are narrated by several different characters. This "lyrically beautiful" (Kirkus Reviews) first novel was the inspiration for the movie Smoke Signals; readers who are drawn to Louise Erdrich's more serious stories about Native Americans will enjoy this equally non-sentimentalized book.

First Chapter  Table of Contents  

Publisher: Viking
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 02/23/2010
ISBN-13: 9780143116509
ISBN-10: 0143116509

In northern Ontario, Cree bush pilot Will Bird lies in a coma while his niece, Annie, a skilled trapper, sits at his bedside. Annie has returned from a desperate eight-month search for her sister, a runaway who became a model -- and party girl -- in New York. While Annie tells her story to her comatose uncle, Will reflects on (or perhaps dreams of) his own struggle to maintain a life in the isolated wilderness. A heartbreaking tale of family members torn between living simply and the excesses of the modern world, this Giller Award-winning novel was first published in Canada in the fall of 2008.

Publisher: Picador
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 03/01/2003
ISBN-13: 9780312421854
ISBN-10: 0312421850

For many years, author Michael Dorris collaborated with fellow writer Louise Erdrich (they married but later divorced); A Yellow Raft in Blue Water was his first novel, though much of his writing (and views on alcoholism among Native Americans) was controversial. The story follows three generations of Native American women beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets and abandonment, yet tied together by the apparently unbreakable bonds of kinship. It is narrated first by 15-year-old Rayona, then by her mother Christine, and finally by Christine's supposed mother, who is referred to as Aunt Ida.

Publisher: Harper Perennial
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 08/16/2006
ISBN-13: 9780060515119
ISBN-10: 0060515112

In her duties as an estate appraiser, Faye Travers discovers a painted ceremonial drum that quickly captures her imagination. Hearing its beats in the night, she decides to return it to the Ojibwe reservation it came from, learning its tragic origins in the process. Created by an Ojibwe man whose daughter was eaten by wolves, the drum ties together the stories of several individuals over three generations, including that of Fleur Pillager, with whom fans of Louise Erdrich will be familiar. Praised for "narrative ingenuity and luminous prose" (Kirkus Reviews), Erdrich is a skilled writer whose mastery of characterization and depicting Native heritage is evident.

First Chapter  

Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 04/18/2004
ISBN-13: 9781571310446
ISBN-10: 1571310444

When Cutuk Hawcly was five years old, his back-to-the-land father moved him to Alaska's Arctic tundra, where he learned to hunt and fish and came to revere the native Alaskan culture. But he will always be considered an outsider by the Inupiaq, and a disorienting trip to Anchorage in his twenties establishes his outsider status no matter where he goes. Throughout the novel, Cutuk seeks an old Inupiaq hunter who disappeared when Cutuk was a child and who happens to be the grandfather of the woman Cutuk loves, but the heart of the story is twofold -- the conflict between modernity and tradition, and the evocative descriptions of life in the isolated North.

First Chapter  Table of Contents  

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Check Library Catalog Pub Date: 06/03/2008
ISBN-13: 9780743265218
ISBN-10: 0743265211

Though this is a novel, it focuses on a real historical figure: Edward Curtis, a legendary photographer at the turn of the 19th century who wanted to photograph Native American cultures before their way of life died out entirely. In The Shadow Catcher, author Marianne Wiggins inserts herself as a character, a writer who's been asked to turn her book on Curtis into a movie. But while Hollywood wants to romanticize Curtis, Wiggins knows that he was a terrible husband and father -- a fact that dovetails nicely with what's going on in her personal life. If this fictionalized treatment captures your fancy, you might want to try Timothy Egan's recent biography of Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher. 

First Chapter