Registration now closed

Tuesday Afternoon Book Discussion (Virtual)

Chagrin Falls Branch

This event will be held virtually on Zoom.

09/17 The Women; 10/15 Crying in H Mart; 11/19 The Berry Pickers

September 17, 2 PM: The Women, by Kristen Hannah

Frankie McGrath is just 20 when she enlists in the army to go to Vietnam as a nurse in 1965, planning to follow in the footsteps of her older brother, Finley. Frankie's parents are dismayed by her decision, even more so once they get the horrible news that Finley has been killed in action. Frankie deploys to Vietnam and is quickly overwhelmed by the horrors of war, but with the help of two new friends, Barb and Ethel, and a handsome doctor, Jamie, she adjusts to the rigors of nursing in a war zone.

October 15, 2 PM: Crying in H Mart, by Michelle Zauner

After losing her mom to rapidly advancing cancer when Zauner was in her midtwenties, the author finds herself in an Asian supermarket chain, devastated that she can’t call her mom for shopping advice or eat with her in the bustling food court. Zauner restores her mother in her vibrancy here, as a collector of knickknacks and face creams, an amazing cook who eschewed recipes, a loyal protector of her family. Zauner recalls trips to visit family in Korea, where she and her mother were both born, and moments during her adolescence that felt cruel at the time, but seem obviously born out of love in retrospect. As Zauner lives through her shocking grief, food binds her to her mother, as it always did, and in meditative paragraphs she shares her therapeutic experiences making jatjuk and kimchi. This is a beautiful, forthright memoir about the bewildering loss of a parent, and the complicated process of finding one’s art.

November 19th, 2 PM:  The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters 

In 1962, an Indigenous Mi'kmaq family is in Maine to pick summer blueberries when their youngest child, four-year-old Ruthie, disappears. Her six-year-old brother, Joe, saw her last. Told in alternating, first-person chapters from Joe and a narrator called Norma, the novel follows the painful reverberations of Ruthie's disappearance across five decades. Peters wisely never makes the reader wonder if Norma is Ruthie; we know that she is, which allows more compelling questions to come into focus. How much do Joe's subsequent life events and choices trace back to this first major trauma? Is his lifelong guilt justified? How does Norma/Ruthie reconcile love for the white mother who stole her from her birth mother and for the white aunt who saved her from a lonely childhood but knew the secret all along? The story is told in braided strands, and it is a testament to Peters' ability that both strands fascinate. Indigenous stories like this matter, and while little is easy for Peters' characters, in the end, for all of them—even for those who stole a small child—there is hope.

A meeting link will be emailed to registered participants approximately one hour prior to the start of the meeting.  Staff will be available for help with connecting to Zoom and technical issued beginning 15 minutes prior to the program.  You will need a device with audio and/or video and an internet connection to join.

If you have any questions please call the Chagrin Falls Branch at (440)247-3556.