I
am pleased to report that our numbers have swelled recently – so much so that I
may need to request a bigger room!
For
February, we chose Cold Storage, Alaska by John Straley and Necessary Lies by
Diane Chamberlain, both of which are now on the Nooks.
Cold Storage, Alaska
by John Straley
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing
outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just
might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935
by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town
enjoyed prosperity at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold
storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering.
Clive “The Milkman” McCahon returns to his tiny
Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to
make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of
their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home.
His vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State
Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything,
Clive might be going insane—lately, he’s been hearing animals talking to him.
Necessary Lies by
Diane Chamberlain
After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy
Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on
a small tobacco farm. As she struggles
with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy,
she realizes they might need more than she can give.
When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace
County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is
needed. She quickly becomes emotionally
invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new
husband. But as Jane is drawn in by the
Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much
darker than she would have guessed.
Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or
risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.