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Online Book Club
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Brown Bag Book Club
Meets the
second Thursday of each month. Bring your lunch, enjoy a lively
book discussion, and meet some new people.
June 12, 2008
 Year
of the Fog by Michelle Richmond
From
Booklist
Richmond's sophomore effort (after Dream of the Blue Room, 2003)
traces a traumatic year in the life of photographer Abby Mason after she
loses her fiance's six-year-old daughter. The moment Abby stopped to
photograph a dead baby seal while walking on a fog-bound beach in San
Francisco is one she will replay in her head a thousand times. That's
the last time she saw Emma, who was racing ahead, eager to collect sand
dollars. Panic and fear soon give way to sheer exhaustion and emotional
shutdown as Abby and Emma's dad, Jake, immerse themselves in the
desperate search for the missing first-grader. As the months tick by,
Jake becomes convinced that Emma drowned, while Abby is sure that Emma
was kidnapped. The trauma and the guilt wreak havoc with their
relationship and with their struggle to regain a sense of normalcy.
Richmond gracefully explores the nature of memory and perception in key
passages that never slow the suspense of the search. Closely echoing
Jacquelyn Mitchard's best-selling Deep End of the Ocean (1996),
this is a page-turner with a philosophical bent.
Joanne Wilkinson
July 10,
2008
 One
Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus
From
Booklist
An American western with a most unusual twist, this is an imaginative
fictional account of the participation of May Dodd and others in the
controversial "Brides for Indians" program, a clandestine U.S.
government-sponsored program intended to instruct "savages" in the ways
of civilization and to assimilate the Indians into white culture through
the offspring of these unions. May's personal journals, loaded with
humor and intelligent reflection, describe the adventures of some very
colorful white brides (including one black one), their marriages to
Cheyenne warriors, and the natural abundance of life on the prairie
before the final press of the white man's civilization. Fergus is gifted
in his ability to portray the perceptions and emotions of women. He
writes with tremendous insight and sensitivity about the individual
community and the political and religious issues of the time, many of
which are still relevant today. This book is artistically rendered with
meticulous attention to small details that bring to life the daily
concerns of a group of hardy souls at a pivotal time in U.S. history.
Grace Fill
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