The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky

The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler, 230 pages

Auggie Jones lives with her Grandpa Gus in Willow Grove, MO.  He’s a junk hauler and Auggie loves spending summertime riding with him to the local junkyard.  But as summer ends, things in Willow Grove change.  Auggie’s neighborhood school has been closed so she must go to a different school – Dickerson Elementary.  But Auggie and her friends are different from the students at Dickerson.  And Victoria, a long-time Dickerson student, makes sure they don’t forget it.

Victoria has it out for Auggie.  First, she steals Auggie’s best friend.  Then she announces her position as a junior member of the House Beautification Committee.  Victoria has her sights set on Auggie’s rundown neighborhood.  If Auggie can’t clean up her neighborhood, it will be torn down.  Auggie gets inventive and begins turning junkyard scraps into decorations to make her house beautiful – but the people on the City Council don’t always see things the way Auggie does.  To find out if Auggie is able to turn trash into treasure and save her neighborhood, read The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky.

Written by a Missouri author, this 16-17 Mark Twain Readers Award nominee shows younger readers the beauty to be found in unlikely objects, and that all communities – classy or shabby – have their own points of pride.

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh

The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh, 306 pages.

When Cheri Stoddard's body is found, Henbane, MO is in an uproar. It's not so much the murder, but the way the body was found: "It was common knowledge that in the hills, with infinite hiding places, bodies disappeared. They were fed to hogs or buried in the woods or dropped into abandoned wells. They were not dismembered and set out on display." So it's an odd world, potentially violent, with lots of secrets, and maybe not the nicest, safest area for a pretty young woman like Lucy to grow up. But Lucy does have her family, at least her dad, Carl, and her Uncle Crete. Lucy's mom, Lila, ran off, disappeared, or died ages ago. Lucy has friends too, Bess and her mother, Gabby (who was Lila's friend), Birdie and Daniel. Cheri had only one friend, Lucy. Cheri had been an odd child, slow, poor, and unloved. When she disappeared at age 18, almost everyone, even Lucy, assumed that she had run away. When hers body was discovered a year later, Lucy was devastated, and felt as though she had failed Cheri. Determined to do right by Cheri now, Lucy starts looking into her friend's disappearance and finds some disturbing connections to people she thought she knew, and to her mother, a woman she never had the chance to know.
A taut, well-written thriller, where monstrous things happen, but where the characters are all people who could explain the steps that led them to their current situations, people who would never describe themselves as monstrous.
All of the characters are well-formed and have the author's sympathy. Even the ickiest among them get to offer some explanation for their actions. A really good read.
Check our Catalog.

The Maid's Version

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell  164 pp.

The explosion of a southern Missouri dance hall in 1928 causes the death of forty-two people and injures many more. One of the dead is the sister of Alma DeGeer Dunahew. Alma works as a maid to one of the wealthy families in West Table. Her sister, Ruby, was having an affair with her employer and Alma is convinced he caused the explosion in retaliation for her sister seeing another man. Was the explosion a deliberate act or just a tragic accident? Was Alma's employer to blame, or the fanatical, anti-dancing preacher, or maybe gangsters from the city, or even someone else with an ax to grind? The answer was not at all what I expected. This isn't a pretty story with a happy ending.

The Death of Sweet Mister

The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell, 196 pages.

Daniel Woodrell outdoes himself in this tale of a sadder-than-hell dysfunctional Missouri Ozark family. Thirteen year-old Shug, or Sweet Mister, lives with his flirtatious, alcoholic mother, Glenda, and her long-time boyfriend Red. They live in the caretaker's house on the local cemetery grounds, in exchange for Shug's minimal labor. All there other needs depend on Red's mood, and his willingness to part with some of his ill-gotten cash.
Red might be Shug's father, but both of them hope that is not the case. Red hates everything about Shug, and abuses him and his mother. He's a psychopath, a drug abuser and a constant petty criminal. There is still hope for Glenda and Shug as the story opens, but it all fades as the story continues. By the end, jeez, you find yourself hoping for the ending you had dreaded a chapter or two earlier. Woodrell is a masterful storyteller with lovingly drawn characters and a relentless and unflinching style.
Nicholas Tecosky does an excellent job of narrating the audio.

Check our catalog.
Downloadable audio.

A Good American

A Good American by Alex George  387 pp.

I decided to read this book because I read a review that mentioned the characters living in the (fictitious) town of Beatrice, Missouri located on the Missouri River, where the residents were German speaking. My grandmother was born in the very similar town of New Haven, Missouri and didn't learn English until she went to school. Any resemblance between my family and this book ends there.

The story is told by the grandson of Frederick, an amateur opera singer, and Jette who were young lovers when they left Germany for a new life in America. They marry on board a ship bound for New Orleans. After arriving in American they travel up the Mississippi in hopes of finding employment in Missouri. On the way to their destination they find the small town of Beatrice where everyone speaks German and decide to settle there. Jette gives birth to their first child and Frederick finds work in a tavern. Eventually they become owners of the tavern and Frederick leaves his wife and two children to fight for his new country in World War I where he meets a young officer named Harry S. Truman. When prohibition begins, Jette turns the saloon into a restaurant with the help of an itinerant Jazz musician the couple met in New Orleans. The story continues through multiple generations of the Meisenheimers with the tavern/restaurant and music as centerpieces for the lives of the family members. They face numerous joys and tragedies and continue on with their lives. The Good American is a realistic story of what it meant to leave everything you know in the country of your birth and adopt a new life in a strange place that you come to call your own.

The Dave Store Massacre by Ron Ebest

The Dave Store Massacre by Ron Ebest--219 pages.
I liked this new novel from U-City resident Ebest, concerning a big-box store in a small town in Missouri. The Dave Store, a fictional big-box, low-price behemoth, drove the main employer in Jackson, Missouri out of business several years back, and that led to an awful, tragic event. When those most affected by that tragedy join with fellow townsfolk to call a strike at the local Dave Store over hideously low wages, they seem on a collision course with a corporate culture that loves low prices, but hates organized labor. With workers sand management threatening violence, it is up to the pot-smoking sheriff, the disillusioned mayor, and the alcoholic city attorney to try and keep the whole situation from destroying their small town. A great book by a local author.

Check our catalog.

Crossing the Tracks, by Barbara Stuber 258 pages

This historical fiction is set here in Missouri around 1926. Young Iris discovers that she is to be shipped off to help a country doctor for a summer. Her widowed father has plans to open a second shoe store in Kansas City and it looks like his new girlfriend wants Iris out of the way. Iris adapts to her new home and enjoys the family she works for. The doctor's invalid mother is easy to work for and Iris decides to make her own future. Fortunately, she has a good friend who corresponds with her and helps her in her hour of need. Iris is spunky and resourceful -- a girl worthy of more than the limited life her father seems to offer her. Then and now, communication is necessary to keep a family healthy and thriving.

A Bad Day for Scandal

A Bad Day for Scandal/Sophie Littlefield 290 pgs.

A great antidote for War and Peace although still loaded with philosophy and relationships...instead of romance, there is more lust here. Stella Hardesty is my kind of woman...confident, strong, with a life calling for justice and what is right. Stella continues her adventures in this third book by Littlefield...each of which keeps getting better. In this book Stella and her assistant Chrissy (who is very satisfyingly becoming a real computer nerd) are dealing with one dead body and a couple of missing people and a former Prosper resident isn't missed by most of the current residents. Stella's relationship with the Sheriff continues to heat up little by little and another love interest presents himself. The dialog and the situations in this book are quite funny. A short conversation between Stella and Chrissy goes like this:

"Hey Stella, how's a gun better than a man?"

Stella smiled, She could think of a few ways - depending on the man. And the gun. "How?"

"If you admire a friend's gun, and tell her so, she'll probably let you try it out a few times."

The Water Seeker

The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt  305 pp.

This well written historical novel is the story of a boy growing to manhood in the early 1800s with a touch of magical realism thrown in. Amos Kincaid had a rough start in life. His mother died when he was born and his father was a trapper who was away most of the time. He was taken in by an relatives and neighbors only to lose them to illness. His father, Jake and his grandfather before him were born with the gift of dowsing, finding underground water using a forked tree branch. His father, however, sees the gift as a curse that would only tie him down and only uses his gift when absolutely necessary to make money. Because of his father's feelings about it, Amos hides the knowledge that he too has inherited the gift. After Jake returns from trapping with a new wife, a Shoshone woman named Blue Owl, he decides to take a job as a scout for a wagon train headed to Oregon. On the trip Amos matures in many ways, growing into a fine man who eventually finds his calling and the love of his life. 

A bad day for sorry

A bad day for sorry/Sophie Littlefield 280 pg.

This book is set in rural Missouri where our heroine Stella Hardesty runs a sewing shop along with her side business where she corrects badly behaving husbands/boyfriends. The side business is, of course, where all the good action is unless you count the "situation" with some customers of the sewing shop who try to capitalize on a mistake and clean her out packages of 2 and a half inch binding. Back to the main event: Stella is trying to help Chrissy with the disapperance of her 18 month old son. Chrissy had recently used Stella's services to help correct the behavior of her husband so he becomes an early suspect. Of course it could have been the ex-husband too. Neither of these men are the father of the baby. Stella puts her various skills to work...skills she has acquired since she began her side business a few years ago after she dispatch her own abusive husband. This is no romance but I found myself loving with Stella. She is a wonderful character and I look forward to reading her latest adventures and seeing this made into a movie. - Christa