Catalog Search Results
1) Tobacco road
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English
Description
A tale of violence and sex among rural poor in the American South, the novel was highly controversial in its time. It is the story of Georgia sharecropper Jeeter Lester and his family, who are trapped by the bleak economic conditions of the Depression as well as by their own limited intelligence and destructive sexuality. Its tragic ending is almost foreordained by the characters' inability to change their lives. Caldwell's skillful use of dialect...
2) Ethan Frome
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English
Appears on list
Description
This amply annotated edition of Wharton's 1911 classic novella includes textual notes and documents, including Wharton's preface, letters, reviews, and early short story, "Mrs. Manstey's View." It is accompanied by the editor's comprehensive introduction and a wide array of readings on topics central to the novella: tragedy, health and fitness, sex and marriage, and turn-of-the-century New England poverty and isolation. Of her twenty-five novels and...
3) Mary Coin
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English
Description
"In 1936, a young mother resting by the side of a road in Central California is spontaneously photographed by a woman documenting the migrant laborers who have taken to America's farms in search of work. Few personal details are exchanged and neither woman has any way of knowing that they have produced one of the most iconic images of the Great Depression. In present day, Walker Dodge, a professor of cultural history, stumbles upon a family secret...
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English
Appears on list
Description
"John, an impoverished Scottish minister, has accepted a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland--Ivar, who has been living alone for decades, with only the animals and the sea for company. Though his wife, Mary, has serious misgivings about the errand, he decides to go anyway, setting in motion a chain of events that neither he nor Mary could have predicted. Shortly after John reaches the island, he falls down a cliff...
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When thirteen-year-old Lora tells her parents that she wants to join Premier Castro's army of young literacy teachers, her mother screeches to high heaven, and her father roars like a lion. Lora has barely been outside of Havana -- why would she throw away her life in a remote shack with no electricity, sleeping on a hammock in somebody's kitchen? But Lora is stubborn: didn't her parents teach her to share what she has with someone in need? Surprisingly,...
6) Genesis Road
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English
Description
Glenna Daniels faces a midlife cul-de-sac. She bears a recent miscarriage and third divorce the way her Appalachian parents taught her to cope with tragedy--in stoic secrecy. She quits her social work position in Knoxville and runs away from home at the age of thirty-six, heading west with childhood friend, Carey, a gay professor in Atlanta. During their years in school, Glenna protected him from bullies. Now Carey is her savvy guide as she tries...
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It is 1956, and thirteeen-year-old Sister must raise her three siblings on her own, as her mother, Marnie, has a new boyfriend who isn't interested in kids. Taking charge of her life, Sister befriends a kindly neighbor named Willa, who appears to be everything a mother should be. But when a respected and powerful man in town notices that Sister is blossoming -- unsupervised -- into quite a young woman, trouble starts to brew. Willa soon steps...
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English
Description
"When small town drifter Sammy Barlach drives into town on the search for his next cold beer and opportunity, he gets more than he bargained for. Food, lodging, and surprising possibilities of a better future fall into his lap thanks to redhead Jamalee and her brother Jason. But breaks don't come easy in Venus Holler. Finding themselves powerless against the forces of corruption and prejudice, Sammy has to fight"--Container.
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Description
In the summer of 2010, Shirley Sherrod was catapulted into a media storm that blew apart her life and her job doing what she'd done for decades: helping poor, hardworking people live the American dream. She was a lifelong activist who served as Georgia's first black director of rural development.
A right-wing blogger, the now late Andrew Breitbart, disseminated a video clip of a speech Sherrod had given to the Georgia NAACP, intending to make her...
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English
Description
Slightly over one billion people on the planet live on a dollar a day. While the reasons for their poverty may be different across geographic regions and political circumstances, the results are much the same. Extreme poverty robs people of options in life, and the cycle is nearly impossible to break without help. While the poor often work very hard at jobs many of us would not even consider doing, not having access to basic health care and education...
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Description
Maura Murphy's memoir of life in Ireland and beyond resonates with the people, places, and struggles of an almost forgotten generation. Born "chronically ugly and cross as a briar" into a poor, rural homestead in 1920s Ireland, Maura faced adversity from birth. She grew up in the bogs of the Irish countryside and left school at fourteen for Dublin, working in service there until her marriage to a hardworking but hard-drinking womanizer. Poverty stricken...