House Of Good Hope

"Combining a reporter's eye for detail, the breathless narrative rush of an action movie and the generous heart of a hometown boy desperately trying to make sense of a place gone terribly wrong, Downs examines the social and economic disintegration of Hartford, Conn., in the 1990s through the coming-of-age of five African-American teenage boys. These young men-track stars, football players, scholars-try to make the right decisions while local and state politicians squabble over money, drug gangs roam the streets and the middle class-both white and black-flees to the suburbs. Harvey, Derrick, Eric, Hiram and Joshua make a pledge that no matter their future path, they will return to Hartford to rebuild their shattered city. The first half of the book flows with the power and grace of a finely tuned magazine article. Then Downs loses his focus and gets bogged down in a lengthy recounting of the boys' track coach's trial. The narrative shifts from the boys-now young men with growing families and burgeoning careers-to Downs's own struggle with his identity and the declining health of his grandfather. If the narrative splinters, perhaps it is an apt metaphor for the boys' pledge. Just one-Joshua-returned to Hartford. (Apr.)"--Publishers Weekly.

In a time of crisis, two women come together and set off down a road of hope in this novel in the Tending Roses series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours. Twenty-year-old Jenilee Lane, whose dreams are as narrow as the sky is wide, doesn’t imagine any good could come out of the tornado that has ripped across the Missouri farmland where she makes her home. But some inner spark compels her to take action. To rescue her elderly neighbor Eudora Gibson from the cellar in which she’s been trapped. To make her way to the nearby town of Poetry, where the townspeople have begun to gather in the only building left standing. To collect from the devastated landscape fragments of life that lie strewn about in the tornado’s wake: letters, photographs, and mementos that might mean something to people who have lost everything. Eudora Gibson didn’t think Jenilee had it in her. But the girl she’s hardly noticed for years is now surprising her—stepping forward with a bravery that inspires Eudora to face her own bitter past. Brought close by tragedy, the two will learn lessons about the resilience of the human spirit and the ties that make a community strong. And together, they will travel to a place that once lay beyond their dreams.

In January 1991, when civil war came to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, two-thirds of the city’s population fled. Among them was eight-year-old Asad Abdullahi. His mother murdered by a militia, his father somewhere in hiding, he was swept alone into the great wartime migration that scattered the Somali people throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the world. This extraordinary book tells Asad’s story. Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a skeptical remove from the adult world, his relation to others wary and tactical. He lived in a bewildering number of places, from the cosmopolitan streets of inner-city Nairobi to the desert towns deep in the Ethiopian hinterland. By the time he reached the cusp of adulthood, Asad had honed an array of wily talents. At the age of seventeen, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, he made good as a street hustler, brokering relationships between hard-nosed businessmen and bewildered Somali refugees. He also courted the famously beautiful Foosiya, and, to the astonishment of his peers, seduced and married her. Buoyed by success in work and in love, Asad put twelve hundred dollars in his pocket and made his way down the length of the African continent to Johannesburg, South Africa, whose streets he believed to be lined with gold. And so began a shocking adventure in a country richer and more violent than he could possibly have imagined. A Man of Good Hope is the story of a person shorn of the things we have come to believe make us human—personal possessions, parents, siblings. And yet Asad’s is an intensely human life, one suffused with dreams and desires and a need to leave something permanent on this earth.

An evocative memoir of growing up in the rural town of Soda Springs, Idaho, describes life in the dilapidated if historic Enders Hotel, Caf, and Bar, the colorful and and haunted characters who passed through its doors, and the author's own struggle to find his own identity in the faces of a never-seen father and desperate boarders. Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. Original.

"In 1683 life is gruelling for the young women in Amsterdam's civic orphanage. The sole light in Johanna Timmerman's existence is her forbidden love for Frans, an orphan in the boys' section who has a smile like sunshine. Then he is gone, whisked across the globe to the Dutch East India Company's nascent colony at Good Hope. Floriane Peronneau's privileged world is pleasant and fulfilling until she discovers that it is all built on lies. Far from being the devoted gentleman he seems, her husband Claes is a womanizing degenerate who has led them to the edge of ruin. And the forces are closing in on him. While Johanna's love drives her to make a shocking bargain to secure passage to the Cape, Floriane is caught in a terrifying game of cat and mouse. The two women's lives could not be more different. Yet, on the long, dangerous voyage to the southern tip of Africa, they will become the best of friends - and co-conspirators . . ."--Publisher.

Robin and Joyce Hill lived in a gated community in Beijing. Their family’s life was marked by luxury and the security of Robin's job as an engineer. Then one day, as members of their church, they had a chance to tour a state-run orphanage. Haunted by the needs of the children they saw there, for the next four years they tried to help the institute in meaningful ways.