The Family of Women Book Group

Sunday, 3-5pm (first Sunday of each month)
This group reads fiction and nonfiction exploring the complex relationships of women in families: mothers and daughters (and grandmothers); mothers-in-law; sisters, aunts and nieces.

Leader: Katie Forristall, klforristall@gmail.com, and Mary Kay Devine, marykaydevine@sbcglobal.net

The Women's Room (Paperback)

By Marilyn French, Marilyn French (Preface by), Dorothy Allison (Foreword by)
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780143114505
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 05/01/2009
Sunday, January 10, 2009, at 3pm
The twenty-one-million copy bestseller-available again for a new generation of readers Originally published in 1977, The Women's Room was a novel that-for the first time-expressed the inner lives of women who left education and professional advancement behind to marry in the 1950s, only to find themselves adrift and unable to support themselves after divorce in the 1970s. Some became destitute, a few went insane. But many went back to school in the heyday of the Women's Liberation movement, and were swept up in the promise of equality for both sexes. Marilyn French's characters represent this wide cross section of American women, and her wry and pointed voice gives depth and emotional intensity to this timeless book that remains controversial and completely relevant.

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780452295544
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Plume, 05/01/2009
Sunday, February 7, 2009, at 3pm
The astonishing "New York Times" bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover. For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Reaching wide audiences through her talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and her appearance on Oprah's online "Soul Series," Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone.

American Wife (Paperback)

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812975406
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 02/01/2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009, at 3pm
A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. In her small Wisconsin hometown, she learns the virtues of politeness, but a tragic accident when she is seventeen shatters her identity and changes the trajectory of her life. More than a decade later, when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. And when her husband unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she both loves and fundamentally disagrees with-and that her private beliefs increasingly run against her public persona. As her husband's presidency enters its second term, Alice must confront contradictions years in the making and face questions nearly impossible to answer.

$18.95
ISBN-13: 9780803260191
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Bison Books, 12/01/2007
Sunday, December 6, 2009, at 3pm
In 1924 eight young women drove across the American West in two Model T Fords. In nine weeks they traveled more than nine thousand unpaved miles on an extended car-camping trip through six national parks, "without a man or a gun along." It was the era of the flapper, but this book tells the story of a group of farm girls who met while attending Iowa's Teacher's College and who shared a "yen to see some things." A blend of oral and written history, adventure, memoir, and just plain heartfelt living, "Eight Women" is a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Weaving together a granddaughter's essays with family stories and anecdotes from the 1924 trip, the book portrays four generations of women extending from nineteenth-century Norway to present-day Iowa--and sets them loose across the western United States where the perils and practicalities of automotive travel reaffirm family connections while also celebrating individual freedom.