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Recommendations based on The Painted Drumby Louise Erdrich
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The Plague of Doves
by Louise Erdrich
A coming-of-age story set in a small Minnesota town, examining the legacy of violence and vengeance.
The unsolved murder of a farm family still haunts the white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, generations after the vengeance exacted and the distortions of fact transformed the lives of Ojibwe ... (Goodreads)
The Round House
by Louise Erdrich
A teenage boy seeks justice for a crime committed against his mother in a Native American community.
The novel opens with Joe Coutts and his father, Judge Bazil Coutts, pulling out saplings from their house's garden and foundation. They realize Joe's mother and Bazil's wife, Geraldine Coutts, has ... (Wikipedia)
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich
A priest's journey of self-discovery as he unravels secrets of a Native American community.
There are two main timelines: novel’s “present day,” set in 1996 during the last few months of Father Damien's life, and Damien's past as Agnes DeWitt, from 1910 onward. Erdrich intermixes these ... (Wikipedia)
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner
A family's struggle to fulfill the dying wish of their mother, amidst personal and societal challenges.
The book is narrated by 15 different characters over 59 chapters. It is the story of the death of Addie Bundren and her poor, rural family's quest and motivations—noble or selfish—to honor her wish ... (Wikipedia)
Amy and Isabelle
by Elizabeth Strout
A mother-daughter relationship is tested when a scandal rocks their small New England town.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout’s bestselling and award winning debut, Amy and Isabelle—adapted for television by Oprah Winfrey— evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant ... (Goodreads)
Bluebird, Bluebird
by Attica Locke
A Texas Ranger investigates a double homicide in a town full of secrets and racial tensions.
A powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show, Empire,. When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays ... (Goodreads)
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Woolf
Exploration of the complexities of human relationships and family life.
The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides , on the Isle of Skye . The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the ... (Wikipedia)
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
by Sherman Alexie
A collection of interconnected short stories about life on the Spokane Indian Reservation, exploring themes of identity, loss, and survival.
In this darkly comic short story collection, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life ... (Goodreads)
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
by Michael Dorris
A multi-generational story of three Native American women and their struggles with identity, family, and love.
Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Indian women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present ... (Goodreads)
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)
Animal Dreams
by Barbara Kingsolver
A woman's journey of self-discovery, grappling with family ties and environmental issues.
Animal Dreams opens with a chapter narrated in the third person from the point of view of Doc Homer. This establishes a double narrative voice, which switches between dreams and memories of the past ... (Wikipedia)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
by Olga Tokarczuk
An elderly woman's journey of self-discovery, as she investigates a series of mysterious animal deaths.
In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her ... (Goodreads)
True Grit
by Charles Portis
A young girl's quest for justice, accompanied by an aging U.S. Marshall.
The landmark anniversary edition of the #1, New York Times, bestselling classic novel, “an epic and a legend” (,The Washington Post,) Charles Portis has long been acclaimed as one of America’s most ... (Barnes & Noble)
Reservation Blues
by Sherman Alexie
A Native American rock band embarks on a journey to reclaim their cultural identity.
The novel follows the story of the rise and fall of Coyote Springs, a rock and blues band of Spokane Indians from the Spokane Reservation . In 1995, Thomas Builds-The-Fire, Junior Polatkin, and ... (Wikipedia)
Light in August
by William Faulkner
A story of redemption and hope set in the Jim Crow South.
The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young ... (Wikipedia)
The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje
A World War II love story, exploring the depths of human emotion in the midst of tragedy.
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, ... (Goodreads)
The House of Mirth
by Edith Wharton
A young woman's struggle to navigate New York high society, in pursuit of financial security and true love.
Lily Bart, a beautiful but impoverished socialite, is on her way to a house party at Bellomont, the country home of her best friend, Judy Trenor. Her pressing task is to find a husband with the ... (Wikipedia)
The Bean Trees
by Barbara Kingsolver
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and resilience as she takes on motherhood and a new life.
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she ... (Goodreads)
The Golem and the Jinni
by Helene Wecker
Two supernatural creatures from different mythologies, living in New York City, find companionship and friendship in each other.
In the Polish town of Konin at the end of the 19th century, a corrupt kabbalist named Yehudah Schaalman creates a golem in the shape of a woman at the request of young Otto Rotfeld, who seeks a ... (Wikipedia)
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
by John le Carré
A British agent's mission to infiltrate East Germany during the Cold War, full of suspense and intrigue.
In this classic, John le Carre's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim, he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction. With unsurpassed knowledge ... (Goodreads)
The Madness Underneath
by Maureen Johnson
After surviving a ghost attack, Rory returns to London and becomes entangled in a new mystery involving a secret society and a dangerous ghost.
After her near-fatal run-in with the Jack the Ripper copycat, Rory Deveaux has been living in Bristol under the close watch of her parents. So when her therapist suddenly suggests she return to ... (Goodreads)
Stormy, Misty's Foal
by Marguerite Henry
A young girl and her family rescue a newborn foal during a storm and raise it on their farm.
Misty is a Chincoteague pony mare who is close to foaling and the Beebe family is anxious about it. Paul and Maureen check on her every day before and after school at almost every possible time. ... (Wikipedia)
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
A grand narrative of life in a small English town, exploring the lives of its inhabitants.
Middlemarch centres on the lives of residents of Middlemarch, a fictitious Midlands town, from 1829 onwards – the years up to the 1832 Reform Act . The narrative is variably considered to consist of ... (Wikipedia)
Orphan Train
by Christina Baker Kline
A story of two women's intertwined lives, spanning generations and crossing continents.
The #1 New York Times Bestseller “A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Beautiful.”—Ann Packer Moving ... (Barnes & Noble)
Marlena
by Julie Buntin
A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl's intense friendship with a troubled girl named Marlena, and the aftermath of her tragic death.
An electric debut novel about love, addiction, and loss; the story of two girls and the feral year that will cost one her life, and define the other’s for decades Everything about fifteen-year-old ... (Goodreads)
The War of the Worlds
by H.G. Wells
A Martian invasion of Earth, exploring the limits of human resilience.
The narrative opens by stating that as humans on Earth busied themselves with their own endeavours during the mid-1890s, aliens on Mars began plotting an invasion of Earth because their own resources ... (Wikipedia)
A Traitor to Memory
by Elizabeth George
A musician haunted by repressed memories of his mother's murder must confront his past to solve a present-day crime.
When Eugenie Davies is killed by a driver on a quiet London street, her death is clearly no accident. Someone struck her with a car and then deliberately ran over her body before driving off, leaving ... (Goodreads)
Missing Joseph
by Elizabeth George
A vicar's disappearance leads to a tangled web of secrets and lies in a small English village.
Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancashire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: the vicar ... (Goodreads)
American Born Chinese
by Gene Luen Yang
Three seemingly unrelated stories converge to explore themes of identity, assimilation, and acceptance in the American-born Chinese experience.
All Jin Wang wants is to fit in. When his family moves to a new neighborhood, he suddenly finds that he's the only Chinese American student at his school. Jocks and bullies pick on him constantly, ... (Goodreads)
Tapestry of Fortunes
by Elizabeth Berg
Four women embark on a road trip to find themselves and their place in the world. Along the way, they discover the power of friendship and self-discovery.
A wonderful new novel about four women who take a trip into their past, to find again the people they miss, and to reconnect with their fortunes. From the beloved bestselling author of Home Safe and ... (Goodreads)
