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Balancing Bountiful : what I learned about feminism from my polygamist grandmothers / by Blackmore, Mary Jayne,1983-author.;
"As the daughter of Mormon leader Winston Blackmore, Mary Jayne Blackmore grew up within the closed-off polygamist community of Bountiful, BC. She spent her younger years riding ponies, raising pet lambs and playing in the hay in the Old Barn, under the constant shadow of religious fanaticism, doomsday preparation and an instilled fear of the world outside of Mormonism. In 2017 her father was charged and convicted of practicing polygamy, splitting the community in two and further inciting the media sensationalism and worldwide criticism that had always surrounded Bountiful. As the world she had always known imploded, Mary Jayne was forced to redefine her faith, family and womanhood for herself. Today, through her work and her personal exploration of feminism, Mary Jayne is helping to heal a broken community, one that she watched turn from safe and loving to angry, arrogant and resentful. She is also building her own place in the world--as a teacher, mother, writer and educated woman--and she has managed to retain loving bonds with her family, including her father. From a childhood in an idyllic but sheltered community to early adulthood in an arranged marriage, ensuing divorce, and eventual return to Bountiful, Bridging Bountiful is Mary Jayne's journey of coming of age and coming to terms with her background as she strives to answer the question: What is the right kind of family, the right kind of woman and the right kind of feminist?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Blackmore, Mary Jayne, 1983-; Mormon women; Mormon fundamentalism; Polygamy; Life change events;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Birdie & Harlow : life, loss, and loving my dog so much I didn't want kids (... until I did) / by Wolfe, Taylor,author.;
"The funny and poignant story of one woman's wonderfully codependent relationship with her dog--and what he taught her about chosen family and the reward of motherhood. Birdie & Harlow is the story of a baby and a dog. But motherhood is never quite that simple. In Taylor Wolfe's case, it's a long, zigzagging and winding road. Meant to be a last-minute anniversary gift for her then boyfriend (and now husband), the highly-energetic and loud-mouthed Vizla puppy named Harlow turns out to be the best snap decision twenty-year-old Taylor ever makes--and the beginning of the most epic friendship she ever has. As Wolfe's resistance to 9-5's and traditional adulthood grows, Harlow becomes the perfect companion for her eccentricities in a world that thrives on conformity. Wolfe's twenties--full of pitfalls and surprises, sad days and silver linings--led her to the realization that life is too short to spend your days in a crate (or a cubicle), that parks are meant to be enjoyed, and most importantly, she wants to be a mom. But really, isn't she one already? A charming and touching memoir, Birdie & Harlow is a tribute to the many expressions of modern motherhood, to both human and fur babies alike. Taylor's story reminds all of us that life will surprise you and that families should come in every shape and size."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Wolfe, Taylor.; Dog owners; Families.; Human-animal relationships.; Man-woman relationships.; Motherhood.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Memory piece / by Ko, Lisa,author.;
"Three Asian American teenagers meet in the New York suburbs in the 1980s. Drawn together by their shared sense of alienation from their conventionally domestic immigrant families, each wants to live a meaningful life. They envision a future defined by freedom and creativity, but on the brink of adulthood in New York City, their fortunes quickly diverge. Giselle Chin is a performance artist, pushing the boundaries of the form while socializing with the city's artistic and financial elite. Jackie Ong works at tech start-ups during the early dotcom era, as the internet's egalitarian promise is tested against its rampant monetization. Ellen Ng, a community activist, fights against gentrification overwhelming the city's neighborhoods. Their chosen paths separate them, but their friendship sustains and challenges them across huge divides of class, status, and worldview. Decades later, their sense of what is possible has changed, mutating against the hardscrabble realities of work and love. Moving from the 1980s to the 2040s, spanning multiple eras of a changing New York City, Memory Piece explores the roles of art, friendship, and creativity in self-preservation, chronicling three women as they strive to find value in a radically different world than the one they were promised. Ambitious, visionary, and intellectually playful, Memory Piece asks how we define a good life, individually and collectively, and understanding what we do about the direction our society is headed-where do we go from here?"--
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Asian Americans; Female friendship; Self-realization in women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The break-up book club / by Wax, Wendy,author.;
"The story of a book club of broken hearts, where four women come together and discover the power of female friendship and find the courage to pursue their dreams, from the USA Today bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding. Jazmine was supposed to be a professional tennis player, but her plans to go pro were quashed in a car crash. Now she's a top sports agent balancing a demanding career and single motherhood. Judith is an empty nester stuck in an unhappy marriage. After her husband's sudden death, she has to build a new life--one she never allowed herself to imagine--on top of the ashes of the old. When Sara finds out that her husband has left her for a secret second family in another city, she believes she's hit rock bottom ... until her husband steals all of his mother's money, and Sara gets a new roommate--her mother-in-law. Erin was a week away from marrying her high school sweetheart when her fiancé called off the wedding. Heartbroken, Erin is forced to navigate adulthood as a single woman for the first time. Once a month, these women meet in a historic carriage house in Atlanta seeking solace, friendship, and people who share their love of books (okay, and wine). Together, with a lot of inspiration from their favorite books, they help one another move forward, to discover who they want to be now and what will make them happy"--
Subjects: Humorous fiction.; Chick lit.; Book clubs (Discussion groups); Female friendship;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Elsewhere / by Schaitkin, Alexis,1985-author.;
"Richly emotive and darkly captivating, with elements of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and the imaginative depth of Margaret Atwood, Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin conjures a community in which girls become wives, wives become mothers and some of them, quite simply, disappear. Vera grows up in a small town, removed and isolated, pressed up against the mountains, cloud-covered and damp year-round. This town, fiercely protective, brutal and unforgiving in its adherence to tradition, faces a singular affliction: some mothers vanish, disappearing into the clouds. It is the exquisite pain and intrinsic beauty of their lives; it sets them apart from people elsewhere and gives them meaning. Vera, a young girl when her own mother went, is on the cusp of adulthood herself. As her peers begin to marry and become mothers, they speculate about who might be the first to go, each wondering about her own fate. Reveling in their gossip, they witness each other in motherhood, waiting for signs: this one devotes herself to her child too much, this one not enough-that must surely draw the affliction's gaze. When motherhood comes for Vera, she is faced with the question: will she be able to stay and mother her beloved child, or will she disappear? Provocative and hypnotic, Alexis Schaitkin's Elsewhere is at once a spellbinding revelation and a rumination on the mysterious task of motherhood and all the ways in which a woman can lose herself to it; the self-monitoring and judgment, the doubts and unknowns, and the legacy she leaves behind"--
Subjects: Feminist fiction.; Novels.; Disappearances (Parapsychology); Mothers; Motherhood;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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A plus one for murder / by Bradford, Laura.;
Emma Westlake has always wanted to be in business for herself. As a kid, she had her own successful lemonade stand and dog-walking business. And when she entered adulthood, Emma sunk all her cash into her dream job of travel planning. But as her customers became more and more internet savvy, the need for her services declined. At a loss for what to do next, she turns to an elderly friend who suggests she try to get paid for doing something she's really good at--being a paid companion. Emma thinks it's a crazy idea until requests start pouring in. Big Max from down the block wants her to act as his wingman at the local senior center's upcoming dance, nurse practitioner Stephanie needs a workout partner, and writer Brian Hill asks Emma to be his cheering section at an open mic night. Brian will be reading from his latest work and wants to know someone will clap for him when he's done. When Emma balks at the notion that people wouldn't, he tells her the room will be filled with people he's invited--most of whom will likely want him dead by the time he's done reading. Assuming he's joking, she laughs. But when Brian steps up to the mic and clears his throat to speak, he promptly drops dead. Emma is one of the last people to see him alive, and so she becomes an immediate suspect. Now she'll have to cozy up to a killer to save her skin and her new business.
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Cozy mysteries.; Friendship; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Cloud cuckoo land : a novel / by Doerr, Anthony,1973-author.;
"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of perhaps the most bestselling and beloved literary fiction of our time comes a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring novel about children on the cusp of adulthood in a broken world, who find resilience, hope, and story. The heroes of Cloud Cuckoo Land are children trying to figure out the world around them, and to survive. In the besieged city of Constantinople in 1453, in a public library in Lakeport, Idaho, today, and on a spaceship bound for a distant exoplanet decades from now, an ancient text provides solace and the most profound human connection to characters in peril. They all learn the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land, a better world. Twelve-year-old Anna lives in a convent where women toil all day embroidering the robes of priests. She learns to read from an old Greek tutor she encounters on her errands in the city. In an abandoned priory, she finds a stash of old books. One is Aethon's story, which she reads to her sister as the walls of Constantinople are bombarded by armies of Saracens. Anna escapes, carrying only a small sack with bread, salt fish-and the book. Outside the city walls, Anna meets Omeir, a village boy who was conscripted, along with his beloved pair of oxen, to fight in the Sultan's conquest. His oxen have died; he has deserted. In Lakeport, Idaho, in 2020, Seymour, a young activist bent on saving the earth, sits in the public library with two homemade bombs in pressure cookers-another siege. Upstairs, eighty-five-year old Zeno, a former prisoner-of-war, and an amateur translator, rehearses five children in a play adaptation of Aethon's adventures. On an interstellar ark called The Argos, Konstance is alone in a vault with sacks of Nourish powder and access to all the information in the world-or so she is told. She knows Aethon's story through her father, who has sequestered her to protect her. Konstance, encased on a spaceship decades from now, has never lived on our beloved Earth. Alone in a vault with sacks of Nourish powder and access to "all the information in the world," she knows Aethon's storythrough her father. Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Konstance, Anna, Omeir, Seymour, the young Zeno, the children in the library are dreamers and misfits on the cusp of adulthood in a world the grown-ups have broken. They through their own resilience and resourcefulness, and through story. Dedicated to "the librarians then, now, and in the years to come," Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land is about the power of story and the astonishing survival of the physical book when for thousands of years they were so rare and so feared, dying, as one character says, "in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants." It is a hauntingly beautiful and redemptive novel about stewardship-of the book, of the Earth, of the human heart"--
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Libraries; Space; Future, The;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 3
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All adults here / by Straub, Emma,author.;
"A warm, funny and keenly perceptive novel about the lifecycle of one family -- as the kids become parents, grandchildren become teenagers, and a matriarch confronts the legacy of her mistakes, from the New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers. When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days, decades years earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid's 13-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most. In All Adults Here, Emma Straub's unique alchemy of wisdom, humor and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not"--
Subjects: Domestic fiction.; Adult children of aging parents; Mothers; Child rearing; Brothers and sisters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Bits and pieces : my mother, my brother, and me / by Goldberg, Whoopi,1955-author.;
If it weren't for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010 -- and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later -- she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone. Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn't know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced -- and it wasn't until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were. Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and Pieces: a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and a beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, "Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I'd share mine with you."
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Goldberg, Whoopi, 1955-; Johnson, Clyde, 1949-2015.; Johnson, Emma, 1931-2010.; African American actors; African American entertainers;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Brother & sister / by Keaton, Diane,author.;
When they were children in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1950s, Diane Keaton and her younger brother, Randy, were best friends and companions: they shared stories at night in their bunk beds; they swam, laughed, dressed up for Halloween. Their mother captured their American-dream childhoods in her diaries, and on camera. But as they grew up, Randy became troubled, then reclusive. By the time he reached adulthood, he was divorced, an alcoholic, a man who couldn't hold on to full-time work-- his life a world away from his sister's, and from the rest of their family. Now Diane is delving into the nuances of their shared, and separate, pasts to confront the difficult question of why and how Randy ended up living his life on "the other side of normal." In beautiful and fearless prose that's intertwined with photographs, journal entries, letters, and poetry-- many of them Randy's own writing and art-- this insightful memoir contemplates the inner workings of a family, the ties that hold it together, and the special bond between siblings even when they are pulled far apart. Here is a story about love and responsibility: about how, when we choose to reach out to the people we feel closest to-- in moments of difficulty and loss-- surprising things can happen. A story with universal echoes, Brother & Sister speaks across generations to families whose lives have been touched by the fragility and "otherness" of loved ones-- and to brothers and sisters everywhere.
Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Keaton, Diane; Keaton, Diane.; Motion picture actors and actresses; Brothers and sisters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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