June - Founding Mothers
Founding Mothers (2005)
by Cokie Roberts
Wednesday, June 17, at 1pm
Legendary journalist Cokie Roberts' New York Times bestseller, Founding Mothers, is an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families—and their country—proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.
Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of fascinating women in the American Revolution, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed, and Martha Washington—proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might have never survived.
Resources:
- The Westwood (Mass) Public Library has created a page with author bio, discussion questions and read-a-likes.
- A University of California interview with Cokie Roberts shortly after the book was published.
- A virtual exhibit on "When Women Lost the Vote" from the Museum of the American Revolution
- Field Trip, anyone? "Founding Mothers: Women in the American Revolution" - a free lecture at the Brick Store Museum in Kennebunk July 18, 2026
- I recommend a field trip to Boston - to Commonwealth Ave Mall (the park up the middle of the road) for The Boston Women's Memorial, which has statues of two Revolutionary era women from the book.
- You can find out more about all of the women in Roberts' book online. But as a former professional historian, I have a soft spot for historians like Mercy Otis Warren, so I'll add this link for more on her from the Mount Vernon website., which has lots of profiles relevant to this book.
Keep reading:
- HTL's US@250 booklist of titles related to the American Revolution.
- I can personally recommend NH author Alex Myers' fictional story of Patriot soldier Deborah Sampson - Revolutionary (2014). We don't have it, but I can request it through interlibrary loan.
- Some of Cokie Roberts' other books : Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868; Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation; and We Are Our Mothers’ Daughters
- Learn about more founding mothers, noted on panels in our National Parks.
2026 April - Prodigal Summer
"She loved the air after a hard rain, and the way a forest of dripping leaves fills itself with a sibilant percussion that empties your head of words."
Prodigal Summer
Barbara Kingsolver (2000)
Wednesday, April 15, 1pm
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by a young hunter. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa, a bookish city girl turned farmer’s wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about the complexities of a world neither of them expected.Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.
**See content warnings at bottom of this post.
Resources (so many great links and pages on these two sites):
In particular, I suggest you read BK's autobiography page and she links to this Prodigal-specific interview with Science Friday
A resource page from a NY library
We have a program coming to the library that is related to this book's themes/plot.Becoming Wolf: The Eastern Coyote in New England, with wild canid ecologist, (and local) Chris Schadler. Saturday, April 11, 11am
Read more:- Read your way through Appalachia
- We have a lot of BK's books in our collection, including her fiction, essays, nonfiction, and poetry.
**Content warnings: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty and death, Bullying, Cancer, Cursing, Death of Spouse, Grief, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexual Content, Transphobia
2026 March - Hell of a Book
Hell of a Book
Jason Mott (2021)
Wednesday, March 18, 1pm
In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That story is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
As the characters’ stories build and build, they converge, and they astonish. This heartbreaking and magical book is about family, love of parents and children, art, and money. It is also, throughout, a tragic story of a police shooting that plays over and over on the news, and a reckoning of what it can mean to be Black in America.
An astounding work of fiction from New York Times
bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times
electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence,
and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.
**See content warnings at bottom of this post.
Resources:
- Author's homepage
- Author's older page for his poetry
- Discussion questions (from the publisher)
- Interview with the author (after is more recent novel) from the Decatur Book Festival, I recommend starting at 30 minutes into the interview, and then do the first 30 if you have more time.
- An NPR interview with Mott
**Content warnings: death, violence, racism, mental illness and depression, police brutality, alcoholism, racism, gun violence, child death, parent death, bullying
Feb 2026 Homeseeking
Homeseeking
Karissa Chen (2025)
Wednesday, February 18, 1pm
Haiwen
is buying bananas at a supermarket in Los Angeles when he looks up and
sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently
widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only
survived by refusing to look back. Homeseeking follows the separated
lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine,
and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong,
the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York,
and sunny California. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while
Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the
home they hold in their hearts.
**Click here to see content warnings.
Resources:
- Author's homepage (including a PDF download reader's guide with discussion questions)
- Another reader's guide/discussion questions
To augment your reading:
- Chen created a playlist for Haiwen and Suchi on YouTube.
- Photographs from 1947-49 Shanghai by Life Magazine photographer, Jack Birns
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