Bridgeport Public Library : Chapter Chat Inaugural Meeting!
Bridgeport, WV – “Chapter Chat” is the library’s second and newest book discussion group. The program launches on Wednesday, September 23, 2014 at 6:00pm! The group is designed to accommodate patrons observing regular working hours and those interested in discussing books published within the last year. LibraryReads, a non-profit organization that accepts and organizes book reviews from librarians nationwide in order to release a monthly list of the ten best new books, will be a frequent source for the group’s reading material.
The group will discuss The Returned by Jason Mott during its first meeting. See Sarah at the library to borrow copies of the book, but quantities are limited. “Chapter Chat” will discuss The Patron Saint of Ugly by West Virginia author Marie Manilla in October. Manilla will be at the library for a book signing event on Wednesday, November 5, 2014 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
If you have questions about this program, please contact Sarah Nora at 304-842-8248.
About The Returned by Jason Mott
Jacob was time out of sync, time more perfect than it had been. He was life the way it was supposed to be all those years ago. That's what all the Returned were.
Harold and Lucille Hargrave's lives have been both joyful and sorrowful in the decades since their only son, Jacob, died tragically at his eighth birthday party in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life without him, their wounds tempered through the grace of time ... Until one day Jacob mysteriously appears on their doorstep—flesh and blood, their sweet, precocious child, still eight years old.
All over the world people's loved ones are returning from beyond. No one knows how or why this is happening, whether it's a miracle or a sign of the end. Not even Harold and Lucille can agree on whether the boy is real or a wondrous imitation, but one thing they know for sure: he's their son. As chaos erupts around the globe, the newly reunited Hargrave family finds itself at the center of a community on the brink of collapse, forced to navigate a mysterious new reality and a conflict that threatens to unravel the very meaning of what it is to be human.
With spare, elegant prose and searing emotional depth, award-winning poet Jason Mott explores timeless questions of faith and morality, love and responsibility. A spellbinding and stunning debut, The Returned is an unforgettable story that marks the arrival of an important new voice in contemporary fiction.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17182421-the-returned
About The Patron Saint of Ugly by Marie Manilla
Born in Sweetwater, West Virginia, with a mop of flaming red hair and a map of the world rendered in port-wine stains on every surface of her body, Garnet Ferrari is used to being an outcast. With her sharp tongue, she has always known how to defend herself against bullies and aggressors, but she finds she is less adept at fending off the pilgrims who have set up a veritable tent city outside her hilltop home, convinced that she is Saint Garnet, healer of skin ailments and maker of miracles.
Her grandmother, the indelible Nonna Diamante, believes that Garnet’s mystical gift can be traced back to the family’s origins in the Nebrodi Mountains of Sicily, and now the Vatican has sent an emissary to Sweetwater to investigate. Garnet, wanting nothing more than to debunk this “gift” and send these desperate souls packing, reaches back into her family’s tangled past and unspools for the Church a tale of love triangles on the shores of the Messina Strait; a sad, beautiful maiden’s gilded-cage childhood in blueblood Virginia; and the angelic, doomed boy Garnet could not protect.
Saint or not, Garnet learns that the line between reality and myth is always blurred, and that the aspects of ourselves we are most ashamed of can prove to be the source of our greatest strength, and even our salvation.
Source: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18222722-the-patron-saint-of-ugly