We are home right now, and not doing too much traveling. And probably you, like me, are getting a little restless and ready to go places. So, let’s travel Route 66!
It’s historic. It covers a lot of the country. And there are all kinds of people who want to drive it every year!
We are going to make this trip easier on ourselves – and more library-themed. We are going to read our way across this historic drive.
All the links on these books go to Amazon.com. If you click on one, and then buy anything at all, Amazon will give us a small percent of their profits on the sale. It’s anonymous, so we won’t know it’s you – but we will still be grateful!
Oklahoma is known for more than musicals – I’ve seen a lot of armadillos there, so there are all sorts of surprises in store for us here. Let’s read!
Pigs in Heaven
by Barbara Kingsolver
Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts.
Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble.
Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart.
This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more
Summer of the Monkeys
by Wilson Rawls
A tree full of monkeys the last thing fourteen-year-old Jay Berry Lee thought he’d find on one of his treks through Oklahoma’s Cherokee Ozarks. Jay learns from his grandfather that the monkeys have escaped from a circus and there is a big reward for anyone who finds them. He knows how much his family needs the money. Jay is determined to catch the monkeys. It’s a summer of thrills and dangers no one will ever forget.
Where the Heart Is
by Billie Letts
Talk about unlucky sevens. An hour ago, seventeen-year-old, seven months pregnant Novalee Nation was heading for California with her boyfriend. Now she finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change. But Novalee is about to discover hidden treasures in this small Southwest town–a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people willing to help a homeless, jobless girl living secretly in a Wal-Mart. From Bible-thumping blue-haired Sister Thelma Husband to eccentric librarian Forney Hull who loves Novalee more than she loves herself, they are about to take her–and you, too–on a moving, funny, and unforgettable journey to . . . Where the Heart Is.
The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.
Shoot the Moon
by Billie Letts
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Where the Heart Is comes this eagerly anticipated tale of a small Oklahoma town and the mystery that has haunted its residents for years. In 1972, the tiny windswept town of DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the terrifying disappearance of Nicky Jack Harjo. When he was no more than a baby, his pajama bottoms were found on the banks of Willow Creek. Nearly 30 years later, Nicky mysteriously returns in this intriguing and delightfully hypnotic tale, full of the authentic heartland characters that Billie Letts writes about so beautifully. Billie Letts first novel, Where the Heart Is (Warner, 1996), was a #1 New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah Winfreys Book Club, and was made into a motion picture starring Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman. It has sold more than 3.2 million hardcover and mass market copies combined. The Honk and Holler Opening Soon (Warner, 1998) has more than 397,000 hardcover and paperback copies in print. Trade paperback sales remain strong, with an 85% sell-through. Billie Letts won the Walker Percy Award at the 1994 New Orleans Writers Conference and the Oklahoma Book Award for Where the Heart Is. It was also named one of the best books of the year by the American Library Association. Until recently, she worked as a professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University.