Great Books

Six years ago, a hoof to the head ended Leslie Hardin's show-jumping career and his relationship with the man he loved. Broken, hurt, and rejected, Les has focused his energies on rebuilding his life. Les's accident has shown him that the most valuable treasures are usually found under an imperfect surface, and his reputation for taking in strays starts to grow. But it's one of these strays in particular, injured rodeo cowboy Randy Hersch, who captures more than just his compassion. Between his disapproving father and his chosen career path, Randy has always felt the need to deny his passion. But when Les takes him under his wing, Randy begins to realize that he is truly strong enough to admit his true self-to himself and the rest of the world. But in the arms of a broken man, can he find acceptance.and love?

Christmas is coming and Carlos and his family are going home-driving south across the border to Mexico. But Mexico doesn't seem like home to Carlos, even though he and his sisters were born there. Can home be a place you don't really remember?At first, La Perla doesn't seem very different from the other villages they pass through. But then Carlos is swept into the festivities by Grandfather, Aunt Ana, and the whole village. Finally, Carlos begins to understand Mama and Papa's love for the place they left behind, and realizes that home can be anywhere, because it stays in the hearts of the people who love you.Eve Bunting and David Diaz-the Caldecott Medal-winning team behind Smoky Night- collaborated once again to create a dazzling picture book that glows with holiday joy and the spirit of Mexico.

With its remarkable illustrations and its affectionate portrait of a migrant family, Eve Bunting's latest book is a jewel. Carlos, his parents, and his sisters visit the family village in Mexico. Mama and Papa are very excited, but the kids don't know what all the fuss is about. If they really love Mexico, what could be the point of leaving for America just for "opportunities"? As they watch their parents with the family, and sneak a peek at the two of them dancing in the moonlight to a song only they can hear, Carlos understands. "They love it here because it's home. They have left home for us." With clarity, warmth, and very few words, Bunting has explained those ever-new American dreamers to yet another generation.

FEEL LIKE GOING HOME celebrates the building blocks of blues and early rock 'n' roll, including Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Chess record label. "Brings it back alive better than any book of its kind ever published".--Charles Shaar Murray, NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS. 80 photos.

Peter Guralnick pledges in the epilogue to Feel Like Going Home that his writing will henceforth be "younger, less self-conscious and critical." Don't dwell too much on the author's oath, however: the prose here is hardly jaded and awkward. Initially published in 1971, Feel Like Going Home consists of 11 chapters, most of which are single-subject studies of American roots-music artists. Guralnick openly reveres his interview subjects, which isn't to imply that he fawns over them. The likes of bluesmen Howlin' Wolf and Johnny Shines, incorrigible rock & roller Jerry Lee Lewis, and, in particular, moody man-without-a-genre talent Charlie Rich (who was inspired to write a song called "Feel Like Going Home" based on this book--it's the final song on his final album) come across as knotty, vivid, complex characters. Published in tandem with Guralnick's similarly organized Lost Highway and his superb history of southern soul, Sweet Soul Music, Feel Like Going Home provides an early-stage perspective on a music historian who's truly arrived. --Steven Stolder

Feeling like an outsider when she visits her relatives in Puerto Rico for the first time, eleven-year-old Felita tries to come to terms with the heritage she always took for granted.

This autobiographical account of the year Winkler spent at a rural teacher training college flashes back to the Jamaica of the narrator's childhood, recounting incidents and vignettes that shed light on the muddle of competing personalities, doctrines and images of self, currently vying for centre stage in the tumult of Jamaican life. Emerging form the story are the hilariously drawn characters, contrasts between the Jamaican and the American outlook, and the lessons about the perils of superimposing a foreign ideology onto a native culture.

Exiled from Vietnam over thirty years ago, Thich Nhat Hanh has become known as a healer of the heart, a monk who shows us how the everyday world can both enrich and endanger our spiritual lives. In Going Home he shows us the relationship between Buddha and Jesus by presenting a conversation between the two. In this unique way we learn how such concepts as resurrection and mindfulness converge. The brotherhood between Jesus and Buddha can teach us to "practice in such a way that Buddha is born every moment of our daily life, that Jesus Christ is born every moment of our daily life." "[A] beautiful and inspiring gift to all seeking a more meaningful spirituality."-Library Journal"His book speaks powerfully about the need for tolerance and love in overcoming differences."-Publishers Weekly"Explores the connections between Buddhism and Christianity...a valuable addition to the growing literature on these two religious traditions."-Kirkus Reviews

Did you know that Jesus meditated? In Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Nhat Hanh delivered a powerhouse bestseller about the affinities of Buddhist and Christian ideals. In Going Home, he focuses on fundamental concepts that still drive a wedge between the two religions--such as rebirth vs. eternal life, God vs. nirvana, and so on. After praising the differences between Christianity and Buddhism, Nhat Hanh proceeds to dissolve them in virtuosic style. Not only did Jesus meditate, he says, but God is equivalent to nirvana. This effort to free us from limiting concepts is Nhat Hanh's way of paving a road back to Christianity for Christians who have been attracted to Buddhism but alienated from their original faith. In effect, Nhat Hanh is dressing up Christianity in the garb of philosophical Buddhism, which isn't too far off from what certain progressive Christian thinkers have themselves done in different terms. Mindfulness engenders concentration, concentration leads to understanding, understanding strengthens faith, and faith provides the energy to practice mindfulness. More conventional Christians may balk at this blending of traditions, but for many lost souls, it will be a beacon back to a warm hearth. --Brian Bruya

Ami Chi is traveling to Vietnam, where the streets are crowded with scooters and the fruit are shaped like dragons and stars. Her parents still consider Vietnam home. But Ami Chi is confused. How can home be a place you’ve never been? She finds her answer in the green rice paddies that blanket the countryside, in the bustling Cho Lon market, and in the quiet rooms of her grandmother’s house. Vietnam may be nothing like America, but it feels strangely familiar. Before long, Ami Chi finds that you can travel very far and still find yourself at home.

In Going Home, the year is 1832, and Skye has a chance to return to England to clear his name and take up employment with the Hudsons Bay Company. But Mister Skye, is as much a magnet for trouble as he is a legend, and this opportunity of a lifetime begins to disintegrate almost from the moment it is presented to him.

"It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading, but Janzen's voice—singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest—slayed me." —Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, LoveNot long after Rhoda Janzen turned forty, her world turned upside down. It was bad enough that her husband of fifteen years left her for Bob, a guy he met on Gay.com, but that same week a car accident left her injured. Needing a place to rest and pick up the pieces of her life, Rhoda packed her bags, crossed the country, and returned to her quirky Mennonite family's home, where she was welcomed back with open arms and offbeat advice. (Rhoda's good-natured mother suggested she get over her heartbreak by dating her first cousin—he owned a tractor, see.) Written with wry humor and huge personality—and tackling faith, love, family, and aging—Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is an immensely moving memoir of healing, certain to touch anyone who has ever had to look homeward in order to move ahead.

Tell Them We Are Going Home details the courageous journey of the Northern Cheyennes, under the leadership of Little Wolf and Dull Knife, from Indian Territory northward to their homelands in the Powder River Country. Incorporating the perspectives of the Cheyennes, the U.S. military, the Indian Bureau, and the Kansas settlers who encountered the traveling Indians, this book provides a complete account of the odyssey, along with source material never before presented in print.The conflict between the Northern Cheyennes and the military began with the destruction of Dull Knife's winter village by cavalry troops in late 1876, at the close of the Great Sioux War. The survivors among Dull Knife's people, along with other Northern Cheyenne bands, were ordered to report to Fort Reno and the Darlington Agency in Indian Territory during the summer of 1877. Monnett describes the group's difficult seventy-day march to the agency, where the northern group began to sicken shortly after their arrival. Medical supplies were slow to arrive, and the food allotments were insufficient. By the spring of 1878, many of the Northern Cheyennes found life in Indian Territory intolerable. They formally asked to be taken back to the higher, dry country of Montana. When their request was refused, a group of about three hundred men, women, and children slipped away from the Darlington Agency during the early morning hours of September 10, 1878, led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Immediately the army marshaled the technological resources of a modern nation against them. Monnett chronicles the Cheyennes dramatic fifteen-hundred-mile trek through Kansas, Nebraska, and portions of Wyoming and Montana, which became one of the most important episodes in American history and in Cheyenne memory. Only when their plight was brought to national attention were the Northern Cheyennes officially allowed to return to their homelands and a new reservation established there for them.