We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype system serving all types of libraries. We are here to help you find new books, for yourself or for your library.

This season we are moving through the state of Minnesota, looking at an interesting fact about each county and giving you a book prompt from that fact. We will share six book suggestions to meet that prompt, to get you started on reading new books. You can also take that prompt and find any other book to meet the challenge!

This week we admire Saint Louis County. This county is the home of the Aerial Lift Bridge, the iconic bridge serving as the western gateway to the Great Lakes. To celebrate it, we suggest you read a book with a bridge – literally or metaphorical.

We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!

This Bridge Will Not Be Gray, by Dave Eggers

In this delightfully original take on nonfiction, bestselling author Dave Eggers tackles one of the most famous architectural and natural monuments in the world: the Golden Gate Bridge. Cut-paper illustrations by Tucker Nichols ensures that this book feels like a special object, and the revised edition includes real-life letters from constituents making the case for keeping the bridge orange. The narrative’s sly humor makes the topic perfectly accessible for kids enthusiastic about nonfiction. This one-of-a-kind book transports readers to the glorious Golden Gate, no matter where they live.

Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing, by April Jones Prince

After fourteen years of construction, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, much to the delight of the sister cities it connected: Brooklyn and New York City.

Fireworks and top hats filled the air in celebration when the magnificent bridge opened in 1883. But some wondered just how much weight the new bridge could hold. Was it truly safe?

One man seized the opportunity to show people in Brooklyn, New York and the world that the Brooklyn Bridge was in fact strong enough to hold even the heaviest of passengers. P. T. Barnum, creator of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” would present a show too big for the Big Top and too wondrous to forget.

The Family Under the Bridge, by Natalie Savage Carlson

Armand, an old man living on the streets of Paris, relishes his solitary life in the beautiful city. He is happy with his carefree existence, begging and doing odd jobs to keep himself warm and fed. With simple pleasures and no cares, what more could he need?

Then one day just before Christmas, Armand returns to his favorite spot beneath the bridge to find three cold and hungry children. Although he has no interest in children, Armand soon finds himself caring for the small family. It does not take Armand very long to realize that he must do whatever it takes to get them a real home. 

Children will treasure this warm and funny adventure of family, freedom, and Santa Claus. The book includes illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web

Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo

Louis Charles (“Lucy”) Lynch has spent all of his 60 years in upstate Thomaston, New York, married to the same woman, Sarah, for 40 of them, with their son now a grown man. Like his late, beloved father, Lucy is an optimist, though he’s had plenty of reasons not to be – chief among them his mother, still indomitably alive. Yet it was her shrewdness, combined with that Lynch optimism, that had propelled them years ago to the right side of the tracks and created an “empire” of convenience stores about to be passed on to the next generation.

Lucy and Sarah are also preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy, where his oldest friend, a renowned painter, has exiled himself far from anything they’d known in childhood. In fact, the exact nature of their friendship is one of the many mysteries Lucy hopes to untangle in the “history” he’s writing of his hometown and family. And with his story interspersed with that of Noonan, the native son who’d fled so long ago, the destinies building up around both of them (and Sarah, too) are relentless, constantly surprising, and utterly revealing.

Under the Bridge, by Rebecca Godfrey

One moonlit night, fourteen-year-old Reena Virk went to join friends at a party and never returned home.

In this “tour de force of crime reportage” (Kirkus Reviews), acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey takes us into the hidden world of the seven teenage girls—and boy—accused of a savage murder. Who were the seemingly ordinary teenagers who beat and killed a girl who longed to be their friend? And how could they hide the murder from their parents and teachers and the police for eight days?

Drawing on six years of research — including interviews with the accused — acclaimed writer Rebecca Godfrey answers these questions in this stunning account of the notorious “Schoolgirl Murder.” Through a skillful blend of hard journalism and riveting narrative, Godfrey takes us into the bedrooms and classrooms of a powerful hip-hop-obsessed clique and the loner-victim who just wanted to belong, then into the police stations and courtrooms where adults — grieving, devastated — must reckon with the shocking crime. Highlighting along the way the deeply entrenched social tensions that provoked the murder, Under the Bridge is more than a true-crime book — it is an unforgettable wake-up call.

The Other Side of the Bridge, by Camron Wright

Two strangers, opposite coasts, and a bridge that silently beckons.

Katie Connelly has lived in San Francisco all her life. Her late father made his career as an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge, and the many stories of him trying to save jumpers still haunt her. When she’s asked to write a history about the bridge, her research uncovers a secret journal hidden in her father’s desk, pages of familiar advice penned by the hand of a stranger. The scribbled words tell of a promise ring and a distant love, clues that Katie hopes may answer her own unresolved sorrow.

Across the country, Dave Riley, a marketing executive in New York, encounters sorrows of his own. As he grasps at straws after tragedy strikes his family, a once whimsical daydream quickly turns into an obsession: he must ride his motorcycle across the Golden Gate Bridge on the Fourth of July.

Does the bridge hold answers for both Katie and Dave? Or will it only add to their heartache? The puzzling words left behind in a long-forgotten journal hold the key to the truth they will discover on the Other Side of the Bridge.

CONCLUSION:

Thanks for joining us! We’ll be back next week with a look at the next county and the next book prompt!