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South Carolina missionary Amanda Brown arrives with a literal thud in the Belgian Congo when her plane crashes lands at a remote village runway. Ostensibly there to save souls, Amanda quickly realizes that she’s entered into a much different world than the one she expected. On one side are the various African tribes with their own languages, customs, and mistrusts and, on the other, the ruling Belgians and Europeans who, at times, are a mirror reflection of those natives. Amanda hires Cripple, the wife of the local witch doctor and so named because of a physical deformity, to work for her. Cripple, with her blatant honesty, gives Amanda an understanding of the complex rules that govern life in the Congolese interior. When Cripple is sentenced to death for the murdering a local European, it is Amanda who must use her newfound knowledge to deliver both mercy and justice. Myers grew up in the Congo and that background gives this novel a wonderful sense of place and a colorful cast of characters. Here’s a story, at times sad and sweet, that is so wonderfully intriguing. 307 pages. 967.5 HOC If you’re interested in the Congo’s Belgian colonial period, read Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost.
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What could go wrong? When Alabama fugitive Jack Umstead arrives in 1950 Listre, NC in a stolen Buick, he’s quick to sense that it’s a prime place to make a salacious living. After all, the town has only one traffic light, depends on a bulldog named “Trouble” for its weather forecasts and just happens to be populated by desirable young women and easily manipulated older ones. Or, so Jack thinks. But, he just might be underestimating the locals who, despite their small town ways, are not nearly as daffy and naïve as they might first appear. Edgerton’s pint-sized narrator (or, spy, depending on your viewpoint), is young Toomey, an asthmatic, who desperately wants to be one of the town’s “big boys.” Toomey finds the evil Umstead to be a lot more interesting than his aunt’s Bible stories even as he manages to be at the right place at the right time to see Umstead’s downfall. While Edgerton’s novel seems to poke fun at small town folks, he deftly peers deeply into that ambiguous divide between good and evil that surrounds us all. 260 pages. NC FIC EDG If you haven’t read some of Edgerton’s other novels, you may want to try The Floatplane Notebooks (NC FIC EDG) or Lunch at the Picadilly (NC FIC EDG).
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Six million migrants (maybe more, no one knows for certain) moving in an ongoing wave, leaving homes and relatives to find a safer, better place that offered a more promising future. Central Americans in 2019? No, Africans Americans leaving the southern US from 1915 to 1970. Isabel Wilkerson’s account of this “great migration” incorporates extensive interviews with over 1,200 of those folk but centers her narrative on three of them whose stories graphically illustrate that great migration. Like today’s migrants, most simply wanted to find a better place to live and raise their families; they wanted to be part of America’s promise of opportunity for all. Sadly, many traded the oppression and fear that they left for another kind of ostracism. Despite this, most felt that their journey was, in some way or other, worth it. Letting these people speak for themselves gives Wilkerson’s story a fresh, powerful, human-driven viewpoint that the dry facts of history and statistics can’t match. Here’s a book that will inform your knowledge of our nation’s history and give you a thoughtful perspective on today’s headlines. 622 pages. 304.8 WIL
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So near and yet so far! That phrase is an apt description for Virginia’s Tangier Island which lies almost in the middle of Chesapeake Bay. First discovered by John Smith in 1608, it has been continuously inhabited since 1670. Although the British used it as a staging point in their 1814 attack on Washington, DC, the island has mostly been the home of a few hardy souls making their living from the crabs that live in the Bay while fending off hordes of visiting tourists. Earl Swift lived among the islanders for almost a year, riding in their fishing boats, watching their daily lives unfold, and observing their fragile, and gradually diminishing lands. He watched them bury and marry one another, watched their children graduate, and listened to their increasingly concerned conversations about the future of their island. Since the 1850s, over 65% of Tangier has disappeared under the waters of the Bay and, barring a miracle, in another fifty years, it may, like Margaret Mitchell’s Tara, be “gone with the wind.” Here’s a chance to visit a world that is so truly so near and yet so far away. 434 pages. 639.56 SWI
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