New items are available at the Hancock County Public Library.
The following items are available at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult Fiction
“My Life as a Rat,” by Joyce Carol Oates
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Which should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one’s family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman, who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episode,s Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of the seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently informs on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement. “My Life as a Rat” traces a life of banishment from parents, siblings, and the church, all forcing Violet to discover her own identity and emerge from her long exile as a “rat.”
Adult Nonfiction
“Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race,” by Lara Prior-Palmer
At the age of 19, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to “the world’s longest, toughest horse race” — an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of 25 wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. Normally, riders spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that re-creates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan. Many fail to finish. Prior-Palmer had no formal training; she was driven by her own restless stubbornness and a lifelong love of horses. She raced for 10 days through extreme heat and terrifying storms, catching a few hours of sleep where she could at the homes of nomadic families. Battling illness and dehydration, exhaustion and bruising falls, she decided she had nothing to lose. Each dawn she rode out again on a fresh horse, over mountains, through rivers, across woodlands and wetlands, arid dunes and open steppe, as American television crews chased her in their jeeps, continuing against enormous odds.
