Madness, by Mike DeLucia, was an immensely satisfying surprise. I haven't enjoyed baskedball this much since before I was kicked off the team in Junior High for popping off at the mouth. At any rate, Madness shines a well-deserved spotlight on the man who single-handedly changed the shape and speed of basketball as we know it. Now virtually unknown, Hank Liusetti overcame obstacles and heartbreak on his journey to revolutionize the sport which gave rise to greats like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson. This self-published, creative non-fiction novel had me racing up and down the court alongside Hank and his teammates from page one. With basketball season currently in full swing, I highly recommend picking this one up. Better yet, grab a second copy and gift it to the budding basketball fanatic in your life. They'll thank you for it and you'll have something to talk about when March Madness is over.
Apparently, Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson spurred some middle schools to have "Yellow Fever Days" after it was published in 2011? While I can't speak to that from personal experience, I can see the value in bringing history to life for the YA crowd. I readily admit, I didn't realize Fever was a YA book until after I was invested in the narrative. And by invested, I was hooked. Our young heroine, Mattie, struggles beneath the restrictions of her overprotective mother and seeks shelter in the indulgence of her grandfather as they work to keep the family coffee house afloat in post-colonial Philadelphia. Mattie's journey to independence and discovery of her own personal strength starts when she learns of the untimely death of a friend, Polly. It isn't long before the Yellow Fever is running rampant through the streets of the city, leaving Mattie and her family to make difficult decisions about survival. Worth the read for any American History middle grade students you might know.
I am a long time subscriber to Sean Dietrich's daily essay emails. You might know him as "Sean of the South"? While I was living in Utah, his short stories provided a taste of home and a bit of red clay under my feet. I assumed he made his living as a public speaker and was a bit embarrassed to discover he'd written not one but seven books! Stars of Alabama falls right into my comfortable wheelhouse of southern historical fiction. In the inimitable style of generations of southern story-tellers, Dietrich braids three seemingly unrelated tales, and a wide-ranging cast of characters, into a grand and beautiful coiffure any church lady would be proud to wear to church on Sunday mornings. Set firmly in the years between the Great Depression and the Korean War, Stars is a love story to the families we lose and the families we choose with a generous nod to redemption and grace. Heart-warming is the epitaph I'd put on the marker for Stars of Alabama.
While searching for comp titles to use for my own work-in-progress, I stumbled upon Family Law by Gin Phillips. In the early 1980's, Lucia Gilbert is an attractive, petite attorney in Montgomery, AL, carving out a space for herself in a traditionally male dominated industry. She fights for the rights of the women and children she represents through divorce and custody proceedings. Though she has no children of her own, she becomes an unlikely mother-figure to Rachel, a teenager and child of divorce. Lucia's advocacy for women settles her and Rachel firmly in the cross-hairs of objectors. Phillips gives us a beautiful story threaded with social commentary. My one and only complaint is the abrupt and unsatisfying ending. I'm not sure, perhaps the ending itself is a sort of uncomfortable commentary on it's own. So, if you choose to add this one to your TBR list, consider yourself warned there's no happily-ever-after, or even a happy-for-now.
No comments:
Post a Comment