Wendy's Picks for our November Book Club

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
This book narrated by death is the story of Liesel Meminger, a young foster girl living outside of Munich in Nazi Germany.  Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she discovers something she can’t resist – books.  Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever they are to be found.  With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, Liesel learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids, as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
This Pulitzer Prize – winning novel is a story of discovery – personal, historical, and geographical.  Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents’ remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America’s western frontier.  But his research reveals even more about his own life than he’s willing to admit.  What emerges is an enthralling portrait of four generations in the life of an American family.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
This book is set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.  Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land.  But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood.
One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.