With the Fourth of July weekend upon us, now is the perfect time to fire up the grill and grab a good book about our nation’s history.
From the Great Depression to the American Revolution, this week we’re rounding up some of our favorite historical fiction novels that highlight the highs and lows of American history.
And good news! It’s not too late to participate in Summer Reading Program. Now until Aug. 13, participants can read books like the ones highlighted below and earn prizes! Register online at Naperville Public Library’s website or stop by your nearest library building.
If you thought you could brave the Dust Bowl…
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Try “The Four Winds” by Kristin Hannah. It’s 1934 in Texas. Millions are out of work and drought has broken the Great Plains. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance. In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life.
If you wanted to pan for treasure during the Gold Rush…
Try “How Much of These Hills Is Gold” by C Pam Zhang. In an electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape — trying not just to survive but to find a home.
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry and glimpses of a different kind of future.
If you’re interested in a mystery during the polio epidemic…
Check out “The Stolen Marriage” by Diane Chamberlain. Pregnant and alone, Tessa DeMello gives up her budding career as a nurse and ends her engagement with the love of her life, and turns to her baby’s father for help. As they move to a small, rural town in North Carolina, Tessa realizes her husband is a secretive man who often stays out all night, hides money from his new wife and shows her no affection.
When a sudden polio epidemic strikes their little town, the townspeople rally together to create a hospital and Tessa works to save the lives of her patients. Can she untangle the truth behind her husband’s mysterious behavior and find the love she was meant to have?
If you wanted to sleep in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail…
Check out “Where the Lost Wander” by Amy Harmon. In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty and loss.
Naomi May never expected to be widowed at 20 in 1853. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart.
If you loved “Hamilton” on the stage…
Try “My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton” by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie. From the New York Times bestselling authors comes the epic story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, a revolutionary woman who, like her new nation, struggled to define herself in the wake of war, betrayal and tragedy.
Haunting and beautifully written, Dray and Kamoie used thousands of letters and original sources to tell Eliza’s story as it’s never been told before — not just as the wronged wife at the center of a political sex scandal — but as a founding mother who shaped an American legacy in her own right.
Ashlee Conour is the marketing specialist at Naperville Public Library.