Maven's April Pick: The Alchemist
Maven's March Pick: The Dew Breaker
Maven's February Pick: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is an enduring work whose main character, Holiday “Holly” Golightly, has captured readers’ imaginations since author Truman Capote first introduced her in 1958. Set in Manhattan’s Upper East Side during the late 1940s, the narrator of the story, whom Holly calls “Fred,” recounts an unlikely friendship with his eccentric neighbor. Armed with glamorous beauty and an audacious personality, the 18-year-old New York socialite is no stranger to the limelight. She relishes the attention she receives, which is often ignited by her own ability to draw others into the fanciful lifestyle she has created for herself. But when a stranger from Holly’s past approaches Fred unexpectedly, he starts to realize that there is much more to Holly than meets the eye. Disguised behind her calling card black glasses and makeup painted face lies the person Holly doesn’t want anyone to see, the person who has been running from her past since the age of 14, traveling on the winds of a whim, searching for the place where she belongs. Maven's January Pick: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
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A classic tale of adventure and discovery, The Alchemist, written by Portuguese author Paulo Coelho in 1988, continues to captivate the imagination of readers by addressing universal themes that affect the lives of all people. Main character Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd who, due to a recurring, seemingly prophetic dream, decides to leave his flock and pursue a treasure revealed to him in his nocturnal visions. During his journey, he crosses paths with several unassuming characters who turn out to be disguised messengers. Each messenger helps shape Santiago's character, his fortune and his destiny, including an old king who tells the young shepherd, "When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it." Santiago eventually meets the wisest of his mentors, an alchemist, who helps him untangle wisdom from fantasy while encouraging him to follow his dreams. What remains is a personal journey of self discovery as Santiago unearths a treasure far more valuable than anything he could have imagined.
Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker is an emotionally charged story that gives readers a front row view of Haiti's political unrest during the 1960s. The book begins present day on a trip to Florida, where a young woman named Ka is set to deliver a sculpture to a prominent buyer. But the artwork never makes it to its final destination because Ka's father, the inspiration for the piece, disposes of his daughter's sculpture, careful to keep his image as well as his past hidden from view. The truth emerges when Ka's father reveals that the scar running down the length of his face was not the result of torture in a Haitian prison as his daughter had grown up to believe. Rather, who he is and who he was are intertwined through the memories of his victims, those who knew him years earlier as a brutal regional chief under the Duvalier dictatorship. The book's title is a translation of the Creole expression, choukèt laroze, or "breaker" of the dew, referring to the political henchmen like Ka's father who would arrive at dawn to arrest, torture or kill their victims.
Winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice, The Girl who Fell from the Sky tells the story of Rachel Morse, a biracial girl who must learn to navigate her past and present as the sole survivor of a family tragedy. Author Heidi Durrow draws inspiration from her own background as the daughter of a white Danish woman and an African-American serviceman growing up in the 1980s. The emotions that Durrow transfers to her main character help create an intriguing narrative where themes of identity and race are on full display. It’s not until Rachel moves from Chicago to Portland to live with her grandmother in a predominantly black neighborhood that she begins to realize the importance that society places on color. Her golden-brown skin and blue eyes help her stand out from the crowd, but the same beauty that helps define who she is also contributes to her feelings of rejection. Told from various perspectives, as Rachel’s story begins to unfold, the truths of what happened one summer day atop a Chicago rooftop come into focus.
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