A Single Thread

By Tracy Chevalier,

Book cover of A Single Thread

Book description

FROM THE GLOBALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING

'Bittersweet ... dazzling' Guardian

'Deeply pleasurable ... the ending made me cry' The Times

'Told with a wealth of detail and narrative intensity' Penelope Lively

Violet is 38.

The First World War took everything from her. Her brother, her…

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Why read it?

1 author picked A Single Thread as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love Chevaiier’s books. She has exceptional skill in recreating the past, from early medieval France to nineteenth-century America.

This novel explores the world of a small English cathedral city in the 1930s, through the life of Violet, a youngish woman rendered ‘surplus’ because her fiancé and so many other men of her generation had perished in the First World War. There are no fireworks in this story, but I found it moving in depicting the hopes, fears, prejudices, and struggles of its varied characters, with the shadows of another World War already looming on the horizon. 

Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

Book cover of Let Evening Come

Yvonne Osborne Author Of Let Evening Come

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on a family farm surrounded by larger vegetable and dairy operations that used migrant labor. From an early age, my siblings and I were acquainted with the children of these workers, children whom we shared a school desk with one day and were gone the next. On summer vacations, our parents hauled us around in a station wagon with a popup camper, which they parked in out-of-the-way hayfields and on mountainous plateaus, shunning, much to our chagrin, normal campgrounds, and swimming pools. Thus, I grew up exposed to different cultures and environments. My writing reflects my parents’ curiosity, love of books and travel, and devotion to the natural world. 

Yvonne's book list on immersive coming-of-age fiction with characters struggling to find themselves amidst the isolation and bigotry in Indigenous, rural, and minority communities

What is my book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.

Stefan promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his story, has grown sympathetic to his cause and complicit in his pushback against prejudiced accusations. Their mutual attraction is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.

Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

What is this book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood.
Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie's aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Stefan, whose own father died in prison while on a hunger strike, promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his…


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