September 14

The Latehomecomer A HMONG FAMILY MEMOIR by Kao Kalia Yang

In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America, but their history remains largely unknown. Author Yang was born in a Thailand refugee camp and later immigrated to St. Paul, MN. Through this moving intimate memoir of her family, Yang gives voice to the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community.

*Ker Lor, a remarkable woman who is a consultant/translator for the St. Francis ABE program, has lived a similar story. Ker will join us and share her story of fleeing war-torn Laos.

October 12

• The Women by T.C. Boyle

  Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions. It is told through the experiences of the four women who loved him as biographical fiction.

• Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

  This historical fiction is based on the diaries of Mamah Cheney, a married woman who had an affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. They meet when he builds a house for Mamah and her husband. During their affair they travel to Germany during a very interesting time politically. They return to the US when he begins to build Taliesin.

*The Women and Loving Frank will be discussed at the same meeting, with members choosing which book to read.

November 9

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Set in Stockett’s native Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s, this first novel adopts the complicated theme of blacks and whites living in a segregated South. Here black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women—black and white, mothers and daughters—view one another.

December 14

SELECT BOOKS FOR 2011