Summer 2011

Papillon

Henri Charriere

Papillon is a memoir by convicted felon and fugitive Henri Charriere, first published in France in 1969.  It became an instant bestseller.  It was translated into English for the original French for a 1970 edition.  This book is an account of a 14-year period in Papillon's life (October 26, 1931 to October 18, 1945) starting from when he was wrongly convicted of murder in France and sentenced to a life of hard labor at the Devil's Island penal colony.  He escaped from Devil's island, to ultimately settle in Venezuela, where he lived and prospered, free from French justice.  Charriere stated that all events in the book are truthful and accurate, if an allowance is made for minor lapses in memory.

June 2011

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

Jim Fergus

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.  In the year 1874, the head of the Cheyenne Sweet Medicine tribe, Chief Little Wolf, journeyed to Washington D.C. with a proposal for President Grant.  Dressed in full, colorful Indian regalia, Chief Little Wolf presented his plan to give the government one thousand horses in exchange for one thousand white women.  Hoping to end the fighting between the white man and the Indians on the American plains, Little Wolf felt that if white women could merge with his tribe and bear children of mixed blood, the new children might bond the two races.  Indians and whites would then begin to truly assimilate and learn to live together peacefully. 

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.

April 2009

The Zookeeper's Wife

Diane Ackerman

When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw, and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, sookeepers Jan and Antonia Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinski's villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the enephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonia kept her usual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants; otters, badger, hyena pups, lynxes.

With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonia refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her.

September 2008

Those Who Save Us

Jenna Blum

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Anna's daughter Trudy was only four when she and Anna were liberated from Nazi Weimar by an American soldier and went with him to Minnesota, so Trudy can't remember much...but she has one piece of evidence from the past; a family portrait showing Trudy, Anna, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald.

Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins investigating the past and finally unearths the dramatic and heartbreaking truth of her mother's life.

Combining a story of passionate but doomed love, a vivid evocation of life during the war, and poignant mother-daughter drama, New York Times bestseller Those Who Save Us is a profound exploration of what we endure to survive and the legacy of shame.