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
“Mrs. Everything,” by Jennifer Weiner
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Do we change or does the world change us? Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise. Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life. But life ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything except settling down. Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreamt of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily ever after?
Adult Nonfiction
“Searching for Stonewall Jackson: A Quest for Legacy in a Divided America,” by Ben Cleary
Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson was the embodiment of Southern contradictions. He was a slave owner who fought and died to perpetuate slavery, yet he founded an African-American Sunday School and personally taught classes for almost a decade. For all his stern rigidity, Jackson was a thoughtful and intelligent man. But his reputation and mythic status, then and now, was due to more than combat success. In a deeply religious age, he was revered for a piety that was far beyond the norm. How did one man meld his religion with the institution of slavery? How did he reconcile it with the business of killing, at which he so excelled? Historian Ben Cleary examines not only Jackson’s life, but his own, contemplating what it means to be a white Southerner in the 21st century. As statues commemorating the Civil War are toppled and Confederate flags come down, Cleary walks the famous battlefields, following in the general’s footsteps as he questions the legacy of Stonewall Jackson and the South’s Lost Cause.
