Travels with a Road Dog: Hitchhiking Along the Roads of the Americas by R.K. At the age of 20, R.K. gives away her belongings to embark upon an exciting journey of camping and hitchhiking with only a cooking pot, blanket, tarp, and matches. She began her four year adventure at Rainbow gatherings, a type of wilderness festival. She spends many months traveling and living within this little known nomadic subculture that creates its own form of utopian communalism. With little to no money, her travels take her around North America from the dangerous streets of East Hollywood Blvd to a little known beach on Vancouver Island in Canada and even to the warmer climes of Key West, Florida. Along the way, she picks up a Shepherd/Lab mix dog for a traveling companion. During the mid 1990's when U.S. tourists were warned to stay away from Mexico she and a companion enter illegally into Mexico and hitchhike down the East coast through Chiapas and return up the West coast where she finds herself in the presence of a Mexican cartel. Her unique travel experiences continue when she hitchhikes a sailboat ride to the Bahamas on a boat with no engine and on to Venezuela where she experiences student riots and the anger of a madwoman. Travels with A Road Dog are the true stories of a young woman who discovers herself and the world around her through her radical love affair with the road. Not only is hitchhiking considered an unconventional way to travel, but it is rarer still that this journey was completed by a woman.
Phillywood by Scott Martin Everyone loves Philadelphia and no book navigates the streets of Philadelphia, New York, Washington, and Boston any better than Phillywood by Scott Martin. This is the suspense tale set during the American bicentennial, of a University City hanger-on trying to make good in literature and music. There are also some surprises in the black history of Philadelphia included in the book.
Twelve Kinds of Ice by Ellen Bryan Obed With the first ice—a skim on a sheep pail so thin it breaks when touched—one family’s winter begins in earnest. Next comes ice like panes of glass. And eventually, skating ice! Take a literary skate over field ice and streambed, through sleeping orchards and beyond. The first ice, the second ice, the third ice . . . perfect ice . . . the last ice . . . Twelve kinds of ice are carved into twenty nostalgic vignettes, illustrated in elegantly scratched detail by the award-winning Barbara McClintock.
The Midwife's Revolt by Jodi Daynard The Midwife’s Revolt takes the reader on a journey to the founding days of America. It follows one woman’s path, Lizzie Boylston, from her grieving days of widowhood after Bunker Hill, to her deepening friendship with Abigail Adams and midwifery, and finally to her dangerous work as a spy for the Cause. A novel rich in historical detail, The Midwife’s Revolt opens a window onto the real lives of colonial women.
Christmas Lights by Christine Naman In separate vignettes, we meet Katherine, who is taking care of her ailing husband; Julianna, juggling with construction paper, scissors, and rubber cement in a room full of high-spirited four-year-olds; Adrianna, struggling with the difficulties of marriage; Cassandra, the busy mother of toddlers; Victoria, searching for a love to call her own; Alexandra, a young woman waiting for word from her doctor about an uncertain diagnosis; and Isabella, discovering the gift of motherhood. The lives of all the women come together in a moving conclusion that perfectly captures the heart and soul of the holiday spirit.
The Heat of the Sun by David Rain With Sophie Tucker belting from his hand-crank phonograph and a circle of boarding-school admirers laughing uproariously around him, Ben "Trouble" Pinkerton first appears to us through the amazed eyes of his Blaze Academy schoolmate, the crippled orphan Woodley Sharpless. Soon Woodley finds his life inextricably linked with this strange boy's. The son of Lieutenant Benjamin Pinkerton and the geisha Madame Butterfly, Trouble is raised in the United States by Pinkerton (now a Democrat senator) and his American wife, Kate. From early in life, Trouble finds himself at the center of some of the biggest events of the century—and though over time Woodley's and Trouble's paths diverge, their lives collide again to dramatic effect.
