Reclaiming Home by Lesego Malepe

Reclaiming Home is the diary of Lesego Malepe’s travels in South Africa in 2004, the 10th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy. The book begins with Malepe taking the bus from Pretoria, where she grew up, to Cape Town, where she visits Robben Island―the prison where her brother served a life sentence during apartheid days. She interrupts her travels to return to Pretoria, where she attends the ceremony marking the official settlement of land claims for her parents’ property and her grandmother’s property in Kilnerton, Pretoria, which were confiscated by the apartheid government when Malepe was four, forcing her family―along with the rest of their community―to move to Mamelodi township for Africans. Over the course of her travels, Malepe traverses much of her home country, visiting locales including Pietermaritzburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Thohoyandou, the University of Venda, and Giyani. Ultimately, hers is a sprawling, revealing journey that illuminates the ways South Africa has changed―and the ways it has remained the same―since the end of apartheid.

Saving Bobby by Renée Hodges

When Renee Hodges invited her nephew, Bobby, to come stay with her for a few weeks so he could visit a doctor about his back pain, she knew he was recovering from an addiction to prescription painkillers. She believed that if he could address his back problems, he would have a better chance of staying clean―but she had no idea what a roller coaster ride she was getting on.
Unlike other books about addiction, Saving Bobby begins after rehab is over. Told in part through journal entries, e-mails, and personal recollections, this raw, honest, deeply moving memoir―begun to keep the family accountable―describes the sixteen months that Hodges, her husband, and their community struggled alongside Bobby as he attempted to successfully re-enter the day-to-day world. Using a holistic and open approach, the shame and stigma associated with addiction was lessened―and ultimately, Bobby learned he had to save himself.
A gripping and heartrending story of survival, Saving Bobby is an essential, timely read for those concerned about America’s most pressing epidemic.

Beautiful Illusion by Christine Nelson

As the march of boots echoes from overseas, all nations that border the Pacific and beyond are invited to build pavilions on Treasure Island at the Golden Gate International Exposition, an event dedicated to the pursuit of world peace and brotherhood. Meanwhile, Lily Nordby, smart, strong-willed, and feisty, lands a job at the Examiner and is given a once-in-a-lifetime assignment covering the Exposition. There she meets Tokido Okamura, the host of the Japanese Pavilion―and despite being highly suspicious of his true purpose on the island, she’s swept up in a whirlwind of powerful emotions that lead her into unknown territory.
Brilliant and enigmatic Woodrow Packard, a Mayan art scholar at the Expo, prefers remaining aloof and alone. But his infatuation and deepening relationship with Lily thrusts him into the limelight. He asks himself, could someone as smart and beautiful as she return the love of a man who is a dwarf?
In an attempt to prevent Lily from spiraling into danger, Woodrow intercedes to help her uncover her family’s past―but when fate intervenes, they are both pulled into a destiny they could never have imagined. Mixing fact and fiction with a dash of noir, Beautiful Illusion is a story of love and deception that explores what happens when human hearts collide as the world is plotting war.

Who Are You, Trudy Herman? by B. E. Beck

As a little girl, Trudy Herman is taught to stand up for truth by her much-loved grandfather. Then in 1943, Trudy’s childhood drastically changes when her family is sent to a German-American Internment Camp in Texas. On the journey to the camp, Trudy meets Ruth, who tells her and her friend Eddie the legend of the Paladins―knights of Emperor Charlemagne who used magic gifted to them by the heavens to stand up for virtue and truth. Ruth insists both Trudy and Eddie will become modern-day Paladins―defenders of truth and justice―but Trudy’s experiences inside the camp soon convince her that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a knight.
After two years, her family is released from the camp and they move to Mississippi. Here, Trudy struggles to deal with injustice when she comes face to face with the ingrained bigotries of the local white residents and the abject poverty of the black citizens of Willow Bay. Then their black housekeeper―a woman Trudy has come to care for―finds herself in crisis, and Trudy faces a choice: look the other way, or become the person her grandfather and Ruth believed she could be?

The River by Starlight by Ellen Notbohm

Asylum. Redemption. Inextinguishable love.
Moving away from unsettling pasts and thrown together by circumstance, Montana homesteaders Annie Rushton and Adam Fielding are bound by a potent chemistry they don’t recognize as love. Against a backdrop of economic boom and bust, catastrophic climate events and war, they marry hopefully and prosper but briefly, overtaken by personal and natural disaster dominated by Annie’s episodic post-partum psychosis. One will meet the challenge with unforgettable resilience. One will be broken by it.
Despite iron nerve and determination, Annie’s periods of depthless depression and violent episodes shatter her life and extract a terrible price. As the town she calls home turns against her, her allies and options are few, forcing her into the only treatment available: involuntary commitment to the State Hospital for the insane. From there, Annie begins her tenacious quest for control over her destiny as a woman, mother, and lover. A century-old story as relevant as ever to women today, The River by Starlight reaches across the years with a compelling message for our own time: that healing and reconciliation can emerge from devastating emotional and financial wreckage.

Mating in Captivity by Helen Zuman

When recent Harvard grad Helen Zuman moved to Zendik Farm in 1999, she was thrilled to discover that the Zendiks used go-betweens to arrange sexual assignations, or “dates,” in cozy shacks just big enough for a double bed and a nightstand. Here, it seemed, she could learn an honest version of the mating dance―and form a union free of “Deathculture” lies. No one spoke the truth: Arol, the Farm’s matriarch, crushed any love that threatened her hold on her followers’ hearts. An intimate look at a transformative cult journey, Mating in Captivity shows how stories can trap us and free us, how miracles rise out of crisis, how coercion feeds on forsaken self-trust.

Last Trip Home by Wanda Maureen Miller

“Who do you thank you are, the Quane of Anglund?” That’s what Grace Marie’s father used tosay to her whenever he thought she was getting out of her place. In her fifties now, Grace Marie is a college professor living in a beach town in California, and when she gets a phone call telling her that her father is dead, she is glad. She hopes her return for his funeral will be her “last trip home.”
As a young girl Grace Marie struggled to escape from poverty, her father's lecherous, controlling grip, and a husband in the Klan. Determined to get an education, she clawed her way to a comfortable life and a home with indoor toilets―but her most unexpected struggle turned out to be survivor’s guilt, so she kept returning home to “fix” her family and the sharecropper shack. After her father’s funeral, Grace Marie burns down the family home―only to discover that she has unexpected ties to both the land and the people in her community. She realizes she will never have a “last trip home.”

The Trail to Tincup by Joyce Lynette Hocker

In The Trail to Tincup: Love Stories at Life’s End, a psychologist reckons with the loss of four family members within a span of two years. Hocker works backward into the lives of these people and forward into the values, perspective, and qualities they bestowed before and after leaving. Following the trail to their common gravesite in Tincup, Colorado, she remembers and recounts decisive stories and delves into artifacts, journals, and her own dreams. In the process the grip of grief begins to lessen, death braids its way into life, and life informs the losses with abiding connections. Gradually, she begins to find herself capable of imagining life without her sister and best friend. Toward the end of the book Hocker’s own near-death experience illuminates how familiarity with her individual mortality helps her live with joy, confidence, and openness.

The Odyssey and Dr. Novak by Ann C. Colley

One summer afternoon in northern England in 1946, when Ann Colley was a child, she met a man from Czechoslovakia named Dr. Novak. This encounter launched her lifelong fascination with Central and Eastern Europe, one that resulted in her spending two years, in 1995 and 2000, teaching at universities in Poland and Ukraine. In The Odyssey and Dr. Novak, Colley records personal experiences, interactions with colleagues, and descriptions of the landscape, creating a composite portrait of these countries at a time when each is struggling to chart its course after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. She recalls moments that are disturbing, absurd, discordant, frustrating, humorous, and endearing―a missing parrot flying in through the window; a robber on a train threatening her life; clouds of smoke from Chernobyl hanging over Kiev. Colley’s journey ends with her return to the figure of Dr. Novak when she searches in the archives of the Harvard Divinity School Library for letters sent from Prague in 1945―letters which, just like her memoir, speak of a past that pursues the present.

Here We Grow by Paige Davis

After a lifetime of seeking all things spiritual, wellness, and at times woo-woo, Paige Davis finds herself facing a breast cancer diagnosis at thirty-eight years old. But she quickly realizes that cancer isn’t her crisis point; rather, it is a landing pad of experiences inviting her to integrate her mind, body, and spirit, find peace in the present moment, and heal from the inside out. She embraces cancer through a lens of love rather than as a battle to be fought.
In Here We Grow, Davis provides a refreshing new paradigm of integrative living that doesn’t deny the hardship of a situation, but instead encourages meeting difficulty through embodied heart-centered presence. Utilizing mindfulness, meditation, and mind-body disciplines, she shares a tool kit for transformation as she learns to befriend her body, cope through compassion, face survivor’s guilt, create a “new normal” post treatment, and discover the unexpected awakening of intuition and open-heartedness in the healing journey. Filled with honesty, humor, and present-moment awareness that reveals our true capacity for joy, connection, grace, and resilience, Here We Grow is Davis’s story of meeting fear and uncertainty with mindfulness, meaning, and the unconditional love inherent in us all.

Raw by Bella Mahaya Carter

In an effort to cure chronic stomach problems, Bella Mahaya Carter adopted a 100 percent raw, vegan diet, which eased her symptoms and produced impressive, unexpected perks―but didn’t completely heal her. So she looked to her mind for answers, and discovered that unconscious negative thoughts, combined with a stressful, hectic life, were sabotaging her health and happiness. Anxiety and a desire to heal it holistically―even before Carter knew what it was―is at the heart of this story, which reveals one writer’s struggle to face her fears, release perfectionism, surrender things beyond her control, and find validation within for her life and work. Divided into three sections―body, mind, and spirit―Raw is a chronicle of Carter’s journey, which dragged her, kicking and screaming, into spiritual adulthood.