Trailblazers Book Group
When: Every Third Saturday at 2 p.m.
Where: Trails West Branch
Contact: Nancy Oelke at 816.701.8311
Join a community of like-minded readers for engaging discussions of great fiction as part of the Trailblazers Book Group. Reserve selected titles at the nearest library service desk or from your home computer. Discussions are free and open to the public.
Click here for an in-depth article on the Trailblazers Book Group that discusses their reading preferences and practices in greater detail.
2012 Schedule
January 21
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke.
Houston lawyer Jay Porter runs a floundering small-time practice – but his financial fate becomes the least of his worries after he rescues a floundering woman from drowning in the Buffalo Bayou. Suddenly, trouble comes for Jay from all sides as he investigates a murder near the bayou that leads him to the doorsteps of Houston’s elite and onto secreted oil fields. Despite escalating threats, Jay refuses to involve the police – certain that his past as a Civil Rights activist alongside Stoakly Carmichael as well as his own narrow acquittal from murder charges would bring down the law on him.
February 18
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
When a white preacher from Georgia uproots his family and replants them amid a jungle in the Belgian Congo, the scene is set for a life-threatening culture clash. Kingsolver tells this story from the revolving point-of-view of the wife and daughters of Nathan Price as they observe his repeated frustrations, such as local aversion to baptisms in the nearby river. The Price women watch with growing alarm as the consequences of political instability – involving the CIA – creep ever-closer. But politics never subsume this survival story that describes the toll of danger and decay, while exalting the healing that Africa promises.
March 17
Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim.
A discrete newspaper advertisement unites four unlikely women for a foreign getaway that proves unexpectedly revelatory. From a medieval castle overlooking a bay along the Italian Riviera, the vacationers inhale the Mediterranean mood (defined by wisteria vines and sunshine) and discover a harmony that somehow eluded them in England. This poignant novel is also a classic that distinguishes a familiar premise with literary style, resonant observations, and more than a modicum of British wit. Von Arnim herself led a remarkable life defined by tempestuous romance and far-flung travel that she invested in her characters.
April 21
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell.
Author Bonnie Jo Campbell has created an unforgettable heroine in 16-year-old Margo Crane, a beauty whose unflinching gaze and uncanny ability with a rifle have not made her life any easier. After the violent death of her father, Margo takes to the Stark River in her boat, with only a few supplies and a biography of Annie Oakley, in search of her vanished mother.
Previous Reads:
November 2011 Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross.
October 2011 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
September 2011 A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.
August 2011 Things I Want My Daughters to Know by Elizabeth Noble.
July 2011 Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan.
June 2011 Every Last Cuckooby Kate Maloy.
May 2011 The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
