Pierce County Library System
Information & Imagination

Caleb's crossing
(Geraldine Brooks)
Once again, the author takes a remarkable shard of history and brings it to vivid life. In 1665, a young man from Martha's Vineyard became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Upon this slender factual scaffold, she has created a luminous tale of love and faith, magic and adventure. The narrator of the story is Bethia Mayfield, growing up in the tiny settlement of Great Harbor amid a small band of pioneers and Puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. As often as she can, she slips away to explore the island's glistening beaches and observe its native Wampanoag inhabitants. At twelve, she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and the two forge a tentative secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other. Bethia's minister father tries to convert the Wampanoag, awakening the wrath of the tribe's shaman, against whose magic he must test his own beliefs. One of his projects becomes the education of Caleb, and a year later, Caleb is in Cambridge, studying Latin and Greek among the colonial elite. There, Bethia finds herself reluctantly indentured as a housekeeper and can closely observe Caleb's crossing of cultures. Like the author's beloved narrator Anna, in Year of Wonders, Bethia proves an emotionally irresistible guide to the wilds of Martha's Vineyard and the intimate spaces of the human heart

Camel Bookmobile, The
(Masha Hamilton)
Wanting to do something that matters, Fiona Sweeney, chooses to start a traveling library in the arid Kenyan bush. Encumbered by Western values, Fi struggles to understand the people she seeks to help. [Fiction 308 pages] [Added 9/10] [39093047157128]

Cat's Table, The
(Michael Ondaatje)
In the early 1950s, an eleven-year-old boy in Colombo boards a ship bound for England. At mealtimes he is seated at the "cat's table"--as far from the Captain's Table as can be--with a ragtag group of "insignificant" adults and two other boys, Cassius and Ramadhin. As the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, into the Mediterranean, the boys tumble from one adventure to another, bursting all over the place like freed mercury. But there are other diversions as well: one man talks with them about jazz and women, another opens the door to the world of literature. The narrator's elusive, beautiful cousin Emily becomes his confidante, allowing him to see himself "with a distant eye" for the first time, and to feel the first stirring of desire. Another Cat's Table denizen, the shadowy Miss Lasqueti, is perhaps more than what she seems. And very late every night, the boys spy on a shackled prisoner, his crime and his fate a galvanizing mystery that will haunt them forever. As the narrative moves between the decks and holds of the ship and the boy's adult years, it tells a spellbinding story--by turns poignant and electrifying--about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage. [Fiction 269 pages] [39093075192021] [Added 4/2013}

Catherine the Great: portrait of a woman
(Massie, Robert K.,)
Presents a reconstruction of the eighteenth-century empress's life that covers her efforts to engage Russia in the cultural life of Europe, her creation of the Hermitage, and her numerous scandal-free romantic affairs

Chasing Fireflies
(Charles Martin)
A woman on a suicide run kicks her abused son out of the car. The little boy, apparently mute, is an artistic prodigy who excels at chess. When paramedics find the malnourished six-year-old boy near a burning car that holds a dead woman, they wonder who he is and why he won't talk. Chase, a small-town journalist, is assigned to cover the story and investigate the boy's identity. But will his search unearth long-buried emotions about his own history? [Fiction 342 pages] [Added 4/10] [39093047156823]

Citizens of London: the Americans who stood with Britain in its darkest, finest hour
(Olson, Lynne.)
The behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant

City of Thieves
(David Benioff)
Documenting his grandparents' experiences during the siege of Leningrad, a young writer learns his grandfather's story about how a military deserter and he tried to secure pardons by gathering hard-to-find ingredients for a powerful colonel's daughter's wedding cake. [Fiction 258 pages] [Added 1/10] [39093047159611]

Conquistadora: a novel
(Santiago, Esmeralda.)
Drawn to the exotic island of Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de Le?on, Ana Cubillas becomes involved with enamored twin brothers Ram?on and Inocente before convincing them to claim a sugar plantation they have inherited.

Corrections, The
(Jonathan Franzen)
What appears as a typical Midwestern family is anything but as preparations are made for an ideal family holiday. Alfred, the father is losing his fight to control Parkinson's disease and dementia. His wife, Enid is no longer in control of her household and feels her choices slipping away. Their three grown children are struggling with their own lives. But for this Christmas, Enid is determined to bring them together for the perfect family holiday. [Fiction 576 pages] [Added March 2011] [39093066792060]

Crashing Through: A True Story of Risk, Adventure, and the Man Who Dared to See
(Robert Kurson)
Blinded in a childhood accident, Mike May never hesitated to try anything--driving a motorcycle, hiking alone in the woods, downhill skiing--until the day, when May was 46, an ophthalmologist told him a new stem-cell and cornea transplant could restore his vision. May went forward, only to find that, even though his eye was now perfect, his brain had forgotten how to process visual input. Fascinated by colors and patterns, he had difficulty discerning facial features, letters, even men from women. How May adjusts to his medical miracle, living with the disappointments as well as the joys, makes for a remarkable story of courage and endurance. [Nonfiction 306 pages] [39093064978059]

Cutting For Stone
(Abraham Verghese)
Twin brothers born from a secret love affair between an Indian nun and a British surgeon in Addis Ababa, Marion and Shiva Stone come of age in an Ethiopia on the brink of revolution, where their love for the same woman drives them apart. [Fiction 658 pages] [Added November 2011] [39093070008974]