Book Talk

Family Secrets

Politics seems to have become America’s favorite sport. It is certainly a favorite of publishers! Out this month is The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Taylor Branch and President Clinton had a secret project to document the presidency in a way it had never been done. Over eight years Branch recorded seventy-nine late night sessions of dialogue, discussion and story-telling. The thought process behind many policy decisions are revealed. Turkey as a political fulcrum? Unease with Yeltsin? And, oh yes, Monica. 

There is almost as much interest in the Obamas as a couple as in the President alone. Christopher Anderson has written Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, about how these two people from widely different backgrounds were shaped. 

The economy remains a top draw and Past Due: the End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy by Peter S. Goodman continues the soul searching, examining our recent troubles. Goodman focuses on how the crash hit Main Street rather than Wall Street. Americans binged on easy credit…and then the bill came due.  

Though we usually think of the Great Depression as an economic event, the power of the experience shaped American culture as a whole. Grapes of Wrath, Tobacco Road, and the works of Zora Neale Hurston, explored the economic effects on the individual. Even the escapist entertainment like movies by Capra, songs like I Got Plenty of Nothin’, and the glitzy extravaganzas of Busby Berkeley show people trying to overcome the economic chaos. For a new way to look at the experience of the depression, read Morris Dickstein’s Dancing in the Dark: a Cultural History of the Great Depression. 

Pilgrims: a Wobegon Romance, must be by Garrison Keillor! To fulfill a promise to his dying mother, Norbert Norlander must find his war hero brother’s grave in Italy. A group of Wobegoners under the leadership of high-school English teacher Margie Krebsbach, find a missing grave and a surprise family member. After a few bottles of wine in a Roman café, the staid Minnesotans open up their hearts to each other. Mr. Keillor sits nearby taking notes.  

Set against the landscape of the California wine country is Crush, by Alan Jacobson.  A body is found in a deep wine cave. FBI profiler Karen Vail, who hoped for a relaxing break, finds herself caught up with a serial killer unlike all the others she seen before. Secret feuds between wine families, corruption, and a threat to a multi-billion dollar industry complicate the hunt for the killer. 

One would not expect a mystery to begin in the offices of a dictionary publisher. New employee, Billy Webb, suspects that something suspicious is going on underneath the company’s quiet veneer. A co-worker finds unusual citations in a manuscript called The Broken Teaglass (by Emily Arsenault). They are much too long and twisting for typical entries, and eventually reveal hints of a secret liaison and a chilling crime. 

Stardust by Joseph Kanon, is set in Hollywood in 1945. Ben Collier arrives home only to find that his brother, Daniel, has killed himself. The suicide of a man with everything to live for makes no sense to Ben, so he enters the Hollywood studio system to find out the truth. The clash of the glamorous Hollywood life and the anti-communist witch hunts force Ben to confront some devastating family secrets. 

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian