Kim's Suggestions

The Day the Falls Stood Still
by Cathy Marie Buchanan
320 pages

Set against the resounding backdrop of the falls, Cathy Marie Buchanan's carefully researched, capaciously imagined debut novel entwines the romantic trials of a young couple with the historical drama of the exploitation of the river's natural resources. The current of the river, like that of the human heart, is under threat: "Sometimes it seems like the river is being made into this measly thing," says Tom, bemoaning the shortsighted schemes of the power companies. "The river's been bound up with cables and concrete and steel, like a turkey at Christmastime."


Skillfully portraying individuals, families, a community, and an environment imperiled by progress and the devastations of the Great War, The Day the Falls Stood Still beautifully evokes the wild wonder of its setting, a wonder that always overcomes any attempt to tame it. But at the same time, Buchanan's tale never loses hold of the gripping emotions of Tom and Bess's intimate drama. The result is a transporting novel that captures both the majesty of nature and the mystery of love.


Goose Girl
by Shannon Hale
300 pages

The Goose Girl is a retelling of a lesser-known Grimms's fairy tale. Ani is the crown princess of Kildenree, trying desperately to overcome her natural affinity for animals to please her mother and become accepted as the future queen. But when her mother betrays her and ships her off to be a strange prince's bride in a neighboring country, she realizes that she will need whatever skills she has to save herself from the onslaught of betrayals that will come from those she once trusted.



The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
by Katherine Howe
384 pages

"Have you not considered the distinct possibility that the accused were simply guilty of witchcraft?"

Connie Godwin thinks her academic advisor is teasing her: she has mastered the scholarship surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692 and knows the question he poses is preposterous. She never suspects that answering it will alter everything she knows about the past, her family, and the professor himself. Interweaving two narratives, one set in 1991 and one set three centuries earlier, Katherine Howe's debut novel is a marvel of invention and historical reconstruction. The author employs her training as an historian to vividly depict the realities of 17th-century Salem, dramatizing the plight of the unfortunate victims as they fall prey to the mania of their accusers. But it is the leap of imagination by which she connects Connie to that distant past that turns The Physick Book of Deliverance Daneinto a bewitching reading experience.