Books & Brews Book Club

Hello Books & Brews! For our next meeting, we'll be discussing Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich. You can read all about it below, and if you'd like copies of the books we'll have some available at the Reference Desk of the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford.

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.

There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe.

A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time.

***

*Due to Thimble Island Brewery's closure, our discussions are being held in the Blackstone Library auditorium* We're asking that everyone continue to RSVP if you intend on joining us so we can keep an eye on the headcount for the meeting. New members always welcome!

Hello Books & Brews! For our next meeting, we'll be discussing The People We Keep by Allison Larkin. You can read all about it below, and if you'd like copies of the books we'll have some available at the Reference Desk of the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford.

The People We Keep by Allison Larkin
Little River, New York, 1994: April Sawicki is living in a motorless motorhome that her father won in a poker game. Failing out of school, picking up shifts at a local diner, she’s left fending for herself in a town where she’s never quite felt at home. When she “borrows” her neighbor’s car to perform at an open mic night, she realizes her life could be much bigger than where she came from. After a fight with her dad, April packs her stuff and leaves for good, setting off on a journey to find a life that’s all hers.

Driving without a chosen destination, she stops to rest in Ithaca. Her only plan is to survive, but as she looks for work, she finds a kindred sense of belonging at Cafe Decadence, the local coffee shop. Still, somehow, it doesn’t make sense to her that life could be this easy. The more she falls in love with her friends in Ithaca, the more she can’t shake the feeling that she’ll hurt them the way she’s been hurt. As April moves through the world, meeting people who feel like home, she chronicles her life in the songs she writes and discovers that where she came from doesn’t dictate who she has to be.

***

*Due to Thimble Island Brewery's closure, our discussions are being held in the Blackstone Library auditorium* We're asking that everyone continue to RSVP if you intend on joining us so we can keep an eye on the headcount for the meeting. New members always welcome!

Hello Books & Brews! For our next meeting, we'll be discussing This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub. You can read all about it below, and if you'd like copies of the books we'll have some available at the Reference Desk of the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub
On the eve of her fortieth birthday, Alice’s life isn’t terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn’t exactly the one she expected. She’s happy with her apartment, her romantic status, and her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her sixteenth birthday. But it isn’t just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush—it’s her dad, the vital, charming, forty-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?

***

*Due to Thimble Island Brewery's closure, our discussions are being held in the Blackstone Library auditorium* We're asking that everyone continue to RSVP if you intend on joining us so we can keep an eye on the headcount for the meeting. New members always welcome!