One for the Ladies

March is also women’s history month, and so I thought it would be fitting to honor some of my favorite lady authors :)

Fiction

Fire From the Rock by Sharon M. Draper

An honor student, Sylvia Patterson is an honor student living in Little Rock Arkansas. She is thrilled when she is chosen as one of the first black students to integrate Central High in 1957. She begins to have second thoughts about attending when racists citzens begin vandalizing and burning homes in black neighborhoods. She does not want to be a hero and change the world, only to attend a good school. Will Silvia ever get that chance?

Nonfiction

Who Killed my Daughter by Lois Duncan

On July 16, 1989, the authors daughter, Kaitlyn Arquette, was shot as she drove home in Albuquerque, N.M. and died the next day. The police department initially suspected that she had been the victim of a random shooting. Duncan believes the police were lazy and stubborn and did not follow leads as to the killer properly. Duncan's appeals to the FBI for help went unheeded. Much later it surfaced that Kait had become involved with a Vietnamese gang of drug smugglers. The case is still unsolved, according to the author, and there are clues galore to be pursued.

Adult Pick

I am actually reading this week’s adult pick for a local ladies book group I helped found. I am finding it descriptive and delightful.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

In the early 19th century three spinster sisters are banished from London by there brother and sent to live on the English coast. The small town of Lyme Regis is quaint and comfortable, but what it is most remarkable are the snake-stones littering the shoreline. These snake-stones hold the bodies of ancient creatures. The premier expert on these creatures is not a professor, or a lawyer, or a diplomat, but a young girl named Mary Anning. Mary’s remarkable ability to learn and remember facts about these creatures is blamed on her being struck by lightning when she was a baby. The spinster sisters and Mary become fast friends and marvel as she grows into a fine young woman, and a scientist.