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Recommendations based on The Plague of Dovesby Louise Erdrich
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The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
by Louise Erdrich
A priest's journey of self-discovery as he unravels secrets of a Native American community.
There are two main timelines: novel’s “present day,” set in 1996 during the last few months of Father Damien's life, and Damien's past as Agnes DeWitt, from 1910 onward. Erdrich intermixes these ... (Wikipedia)
The Round House
by Louise Erdrich
A teenage boy seeks justice for a crime committed against his mother in a Native American community.
The novel opens with Joe Coutts and his father, Judge Bazil Coutts, pulling out saplings from their house's garden and foundation. They realize Joe's mother and Bazil's wife, Geraldine Coutts, has ... (Wikipedia)
The Master Butchers Singing Club
by Louise Erdrich
A story of interconnected lives in a small Midwestern town and the secrets that bind them together.
The novel begins at the end of World War I with Fidelis Waldvogel, a German sniper, returning to his hometown in defeated Germany from the battle lines. Fidelis seeks out Eva Kalb, the pregnant ... (Wikipedia)
Ceremony
by Leslie Marmon Silko
A young Native American man's healing journey, reclaiming cultural roots and identity.
Ceremony follows a half- Pueblo , half-white man named Tayo after his return from World War II . His white doctors say he is suffering from "battle fatigue," which would be called post-traumatic ... (Wikipedia)
A Mercy
by Toni Morrison
An exploration of the human condition and the consequences of slavery in America.
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in ... (Goodreads)
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
A tangled web of family secrets, betrayal, and tragedy in the American South.
Absalom, Absalom! details the rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen , a white man born into poverty in West Virginia who moves to Mississippi with the complementary aims of gaining wealth and becoming a ... (Wikipedia)
Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Collection of stories exploring the complexities of family, culture, and identity.
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take ... (Goodreads)
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Díaz
An exploration of love, identity, and the power of fate in a family's struggles and triumphs.
Oscar de León (nicknamed Oscar Wao, a bastardization of Oscar Wilde ) is an overweight Dominican growing up in Paterson, New Jersey. Oscar desperately wants to be successful with women but, from a ... (Wikipedia)
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
An exploration of race, identity, and belonging as two Nigerian immigrants experience life in America and beyond.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to ... (Goodreads)
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
by Anthony Marra
An exploration of the aftermath of a civil war, and the power of human connection.
A brilliant debut novel that brings to life an abandoned hospital where a tough-minded doctor decides to harbor a hunted young girl, with powerful consequences. In the final days of December 2004, in ... (Goodreads)
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
Tragic story of the decline of a southern family, exploring the human condition.
The first section of the novel is narrated by Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a source of shame to the family due to his diminished mental capacity; the only characters who show genuine care for him are ... (Wikipedia)
Light in August
by William Faulkner
A story of redemption and hope set in the Jim Crow South.
The novel is set in the American South in the 1930s, during the time of Prohibition and Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation in the South. It begins with the journey of Lena Grove, a young ... (Wikipedia)
The Book of Night Women
by Marlon James
A young slave girl in Jamaica plots a rebellion against her cruel plantation owner.
The Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of ... (Goodreads)
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
A black man's journey towards self-actualization in a world of racial oppression.
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He ... (Wikipedia)
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
An exploration of the life of a small-town woman, revealing her struggles and emotional complexities.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires. At times stern, at other times ... (Goodreads)
Patina
by Jason Reynolds
Patina, a young girl, navigates the challenges of school, family, and track practice while learning to trust and rely on others.
Patina, or Patty, runs like a flash. She runs for many reasons—to escape the taunts from the kids at the fancy-schmancy new school she’s been sent to since she and her little sister had to stop ... (Goodreads)
Away
by Amy Bloom
A young Jewish girl in the early 20th century travels from New York to Siberia in search of her father. Along the way, she discovers love and loss.
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America ... (Goodreads)
The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri
A young Indian-American's journey of reconciling two different cultures and his own identity.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, a young Bengali couple, leave Calcutta , India, and settle in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts . Ashoke is an engineering student at the ... (Wikipedia)
Assassin's Apprentice
by Robin Hobb
A humble orphan discovers his true identity, rising through the ranks to become a powerful assassin.
The novel covers the early life of FitzChivalry , a royal bastard living in Buckkeep Castle as he begins his training as an assassin and successfully safeguards the throne from his over-ambitious ... (Wikipedia)
Boy, Snow, Bird
by Helen Oyeyemi
A retelling of Snow White set in 1950s America, exploring themes of identity, race and family.
Boy Novak, a young white girl, is born to an abusive father who works as an exterminator and whom she refers to as the rat catcher. In the winter of 1953, when she is twenty years old, Boy runs away ... (Wikipedia)
Zoo City
by Lauren Beukes
In a gritty Johannesburg, people with criminal pasts are magically bonded to animals. A former journalist with a sloth investigates a murder.
Zoo City is set in an alternate version of the South African city of Johannesburg , in which people who have committed a crime are magically attached to an animal familiar – those who receive such ... (Wikipedia)
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Story of two sisters navigating a civil war in Nigeria, and the effects of colonialism.
The novel takes place in Nigeria prior to and during the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The effect of the war is shown through the relationships of five people's lives including the twin daughters of ... (Wikipedia)
Prep
by Curtis Sittenfeld
A teenage girl's struggle to find her place and identity in an elite prep school.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep , is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ... (Goodreads)
Nervous Conditions
by Tsitsi Dangarembga
A young girl's struggles to create her own identity amidst the oppressive colonial structures of her society.
Tambu is the main character of the novel. The novel opens up with the news that Tambu’s older brother, Nhamo, had just died. Tambu is not upset about this because Nhamo studied at a missionary school ... (Wikipedia)
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie
A young Native American boy's struggles to survive in a difficult world.
The book follows a fourteen-year-old boy living with his family on the Spokane Indian Reservation near Wellpinit, Washington for a school year. It is told in episodic diary style, moving from the ... (Wikipedia)
My Ántonia
by Willa Cather
A young man's reminiscences of his childhood in rural Nebraska, and of his friendships with the immigrants he met there.
Orphaned Jim Burden rides the trains from Virginia to Black Hawk, Nebraska, where he will live with his paternal grandparents. Jake, a farmhand from Virginia, rides with the 10-year-old boy. On the ... (Wikipedia)
Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
Epic tale of an American family's journey through the Vietnam War.
Johnson's novel revolves around the associations and interactions with Francis X. Sands, a retired Air Force colonel and war hero, now a CIA official in Southeast Asia. The story is told primarily ... (Wikipedia)
Three Day Road
by Joseph Boyden
Two Cree snipers fight in WWI, one returns home addicted to morphine, the other lost to the war.
It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is ... (Goodreads)
'night, Mother
by Marsha Norman
A mother and daughter grapple with the consequences of a mother's impending suicide.
',night, Mother, is a taut and fluid drama that addresses different emotions and special relations. By one of America's most talented playwrights, this play won the Dramatists Guild's prestigious ... (Goodreads)
Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories
by Karen Russell
A collection of short stories that blend the supernatural with the mundane, exploring the human condition through fantastical elements.
Named a Best Book of the Year by:,The Boston Globe,O, The Oprah Magazine,Huffington Post,The A.V. Club,A, Washington Post, Notable Book,An, NPR, Great Read of 2013, From the author of the novel ... (Goodreads)
