Download or read book The Red and the White A Family Saga of the American West written by Andrew R. Graybill and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-10-07 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award. One of the American West’s bloodiest—and least-known—massacres is searingly re-created in this generation-spanning history of native-white intermarriage. At dawn on January 23, 1870, four hundred men of the Second U.S. Cavalry attacked and butchered a Piegan camp near the Marias River in Montana in one of the worst slaughters of Indians by American military forces in U.S. history. Coming to avenge the murder of their father—a former fur-trader named Malcolm Clarke who had been killed four months earlier by their Piegan mother’s cousin—Clarke ’s own two sons joined the cavalry in a slaughter of many of their own relatives. In this groundbreaking work of American history, Andrew R. Graybill places the Marias Massacre within a larger, three-generation saga of the Clarke family, particularly illuminating the complex history of native-white intermarriage in the American Northwest.

Download or read book The Most Fun We Ever Had written by Claire Lombardo and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “A gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory.” —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe In this “rich, complex family saga” (USA Today) full of long-buried family secrets, Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. With the unexpected arrival of young Jonah Bendt—a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters fifteen years before—the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past. As they grapple with years marred by adolescent angst, infidelity, and resentment, they also find the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.

Download or read book The Thorn Birds written by Colleen McCullough and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-05-11 with total page 689 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most beloved novels of all time, Colleen McCullough's magnificent saga of dreams, struggles, dark passions, and forbidden love in the Australian outback has enthralled readers the world over. The Thorn Birds is a chronicle of three generations of Clearys—an indomitable clan of ranchers carving lives from a beautiful, hard land while contending with the bitterness, frailty, and secrets that penetrate their family. It is a poignant love story, a powerful epic of struggle and sacrifice, a celebration of individuality and spirit. Most of all, it is the story of the Clearys' only daughter, Meggie, and the haunted priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart—and the intense joining of two hearts and souls over a lifetime, a relationship that dangerously oversteps sacred boundaries of ethics and dogma.

Download or read book Saga Boy written by Antonio Michael Downing and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Black immigrant journeys from the Caribbean to Canada—and through multiple musical personas—in a “deeply moving” memoir “suffused with poetic prose” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). As a clever, willful boy in a tiny village in the tropical forests of Trinidad—raised by his indomitable grandmother, Miss Excelly, and her King James Bible—Antonio Michael Downing is steeped in the legacies of his scattered family, the vibrant culture of the island, and the weight of its colonial history. But after Miss Excelly’s death, everything changes. The eleven-year-old seems to fall asleep in the jungle and wake up in a blizzard: he is sent to live with his devoutly evangelical Aunt Joan in rural Canada, where they are the only Black family in a landscape starkly devoid of the warm lushness of his childhood. Isolated and longing for home, Downing begins a decades-long journey to transform himself through music and performance. A reunion with his birth parents, whom he’s known only through story, closes more doors than it opens. Instead, Downing seeks refuge in increasingly extravagant musical personalities: “Mic Dainjah,” a boisterous punk rapper; “Molasses,” a soul crooner; and, finally, an eccentric dystopian-era pop star clad in leather and gold, “John Orpheus.” In his mid-thirties, increasingly addicted to escapism, attention, and sex, Downing realizes he has become a “Saga Boy”—a Trinidadian playboy archetype—like his father and grandfather before him. When his choices land him in a jail cell, Downing must face who he has become. “Lush language and sensory details make the fascinating events of this memoir pop. An authentic, entertaining, and timely account of a creative immigrant’s experiences.” —Booklist “Downing’s elegant, engaging memoir will have particular significance to readers from the Caribbean diaspora, but it will be understood by any reader who has ever had their world suddenly upended and needed to make it whole again.” —Library Journal “A rich memoir about how far some folks have to travel just to arrive where they began.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Download or read book The Pillars of the Earth written by Ken Follett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 1009 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times Bestseller Oprah's Book Club Selection The “extraordinary . . . monumental masterpiece” (Booklist) that changed the course of Ken Follett’s already phenomenal career—and begins where its prequel, The Evening and the Morning, ended. “Follett risks all and comes out a clear winner,” extolled Publishers Weekly on the release of The Pillars of the Earth. A departure for the bestselling thriller writer, the historical epic stunned readers and critics alike with its ambitious scope and gripping humanity. Today, it stands as a testament to Follett’s unassailable command of the written word and to his universal appeal. The Pillars of the Earth tells the story of Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known . . . of Tom, the mason who becomes his architect—a man divided in his soul . . . of the beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena, haunted by a secret shame . . . and of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother. A spellbinding epic tale of ambition, anarchy, and absolute power set against the sprawling medieval canvas of twelfth-century England, this is Ken Follett’s historical masterpiece.

Download or read book For Adam s Sake written by Allegra Di Bonaventura and published by Liveright. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the New England Historical Association’s James P. Hanlan Book Award Winner the Association for the Study of Connecticut History’s Homer D. Babbidge Jr. Award “Incomparably vivid . . . as enthralling a portrait of family life [in colonial New England] as we are likely to have.”—Wall Street Journal In the tradition of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s classic, A Midwife’s Tale, comes this groundbreaking narrative by one of America’s most promising colonial historians. Joshua Hempstead was a well-respected farmer and tradesman in New London, Connecticut. As his remarkable diary—kept from 1711 until 1758—reveals, he was also a slave owner who owned Adam Jackson for over thirty years. In this engrossing narrative of family life and the slave experience in the colonial North, Allegra di Bonaventura describes the complexity of this master/slave relationship and traces the intertwining stories of two families until the eve of the Revolution. Slavery is often left out of our collective memory of New England’s history, but it was hugely impactful on the central unit of colonial life: the family. In every corner, the lines between slavery and freedom were blurred as families across the social spectrum fought to survive. In this enlightening study, a new portrait of an era emerges.

Download or read book Monkey Boy written by Francisco Goldman and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 2021-05-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guatemalan-American writer returns to the Boston suburb of his youth in this American Book Award–winning novel “full of rebellious comedy and vitality” (New Yorker). A 2022 Pulitzer Prize Finalist In Monkey Boy, Francisco Goldman’s “brilliantly constructed auto-fiction” (NPR), we meet Francisco Goldberg, a middle-aged writer grappling with the challenges of family and love, legacies of violence and war, and growing up as the son of immigrants. Having fled Mexico after his journalism provokes the wrong people, Goldberg’s attempt to start fresh in New York. But even as he finds himself falling in love, he is drawn away yet again—back to his childhood home in the white, working-class suburbs of Boston. Frankie is beckoned there by a high school girlfriend who witnessed his youthful humiliations, and by his ailing mother, Yolanda, whose intermittent lucidity unearths forgotten pockets of the past. His brief trip is haunted by memories of his recently deceased father, the Guatemalan woman who helped raise him, and the high school bullies who called him “monkey boy.”

Download or read book Our Kid written by Billy Hopkins and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This autobiographical novel tells the story of growing up in poverty in wartime Manchester. The author combines the pace and humour of a family saga with real nostalgia and accurate period detail and atmosphere.

Download or read book A Family Saga written by B.B. Ellis and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the seven of us have dispersed across the country in our adult lives, we still get together occasionally for family reunions. When we do, the conversation often turns to stories beginning with, Do you remember when. One day we decided that some of these stories should be written down, especially since some of the most cherished stories dealt with our grandparents. We were afraid that these older stories would become lost in the mists of time, and we were aware that our more recent stories would someday be old stories to our children and grandchildren. Thus was born the idea of this book. We have all contributed remembrances to this little volume and we hope that our children will be able to know more about where their parents came from. Compiling this book has been one more enjoyable and unifying activity for a family that continues to cherish each other.

Download or read book Roots Branches written by Michael M. Meguid and published by . This book was released on 2020-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roots & Branches is rooted in a story of love and longing based on a fatal accident in a primitive upper Egyptian village over a century ago. In this rich and powerful story Meguid explores his remarkable early life based on a journal, letters and photos, which amply illustrate the book. How does a four-year-old boy uprooted from a cozy Egyptian family endure abandonment in impoverished post-war Germany? In his vivid biography of his formative years Meguid traces his childhood-alone, forsaken and often threatened with corporal punishment. Born to an Egyptian father and a German mother, his earliest memories of Cairo are idyllic, but his mother's refusal to adapt to Egyptian life resulted in upheaval. At the age of four, his parents left him in Hamburg with his German grandparents, where life became defined by the rigid rules of his Prussian grandfather. The desertion left him with a gaping hole, howling loneliness, and a longing that rippled through him. When his parents collected him five years later, they took him to England, where once again he had to adapt to being an outsider. When he eventually returned to his beloved Egypt, he had been gone so long that he no longer quite fit in there either. His father's premature death thrusted Meguid into another existential crisis of abandonment. Facing conscription and an uncertain future, Meguid learned to navigate his own path.

Download or read book God is an Englishman written by Ronald Frederick Delderfield and published by CNIB, 197. This book was released on 1971 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bestselling novel set in the ruthless world of Victorian commerce follows the fortunes of Adam Swann, a scion of an Army family and veteran of campaigns in the Crimea and in India, in his quest to found his own financial dynasty. His struggle to succeed and his conquest of Henrietta, the spirited daughter of a rich manufacturer, drive a richly woven tale that takes the reader from the dusty plains of India to the teeming slums of nineteenth-century London, from the chaos of the great industrial cities to the age of the peaceful certainties of the English countryside.Filled with epic scenes and memorable characters, God is an Englishman triumphs in its portrayal of human strength and weakness, and in its revelations of the power of love.

Download or read book The Last Cottonwood Seed written by Susan Montgomery Moffett and published by America Star Books. This book was released on 2013-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Cottonwood Seed is a rendering of memories of one family member. The book starts with Reva who was born in 1901 on a farm in Alda, Nebraska. The story passes through years of experiences and miles of roads traveled. It covers Reva's unusual letter writing courtship to a soldier stationed at Panama, their marriage and move to Arizona with three children. They started a new life and had three more children which began an epic saga that stretches over a hundred years. The last child entrenched in living this life put her memories to pen to build this family story. It is played out in real life happenings that take place through years of struggle, feast and famine, and encompasses the ultimate outcome of understanding the excitement of growing and becoming. The story is an entwining of personalities, differences, life issues and wonders. How is it thar we each become who we are? Within the family structure, each person develops their unique abilities and perception of life, with their own likes and dislikes. Each has their own characteristics and developmental experiences. This story is a true capture of one American Family and gives much food for thought as well as it gives a critical view of family life and individual development.

Download or read book Discover Family Saga written by Alessandra Jargas and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is based on the actual events that took place in the author's family, she calls this a memoir of sorts. She looks back to a time when the sisters were young enough to feel invincible and foolish enough to believe it would last forever. This is a sad but true story of family matters, love, and tragedy. It will touch your heart and stay with you long after you have closed the book.

Download or read book Annie s Ghosts written by Steve Luxenberg and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beth Luxenberg was an only child. Or so everyone thought. Six months after Beth's death, her secret emerged. It had a name: Annie. Praise for Annie's Ghosts "Annie's Ghosts is one of the most remarkable books I have ever read . . . From mental institutions to the Holocaust, from mothers and fathers to children and childhood, with its mysteries, sadness, and joy--this book is one emotional ride."--Bob Woodward, author of The War Within and State of Denial "Steve Luxenberg sleuths his family's hidden history with the skills of an investigative reporter, the instincts of a mystery writer, and the sympathy of a loving son. His rediscovery of one lost woman illuminates the shocking fate of thousands of Americans who disappeared just a generation ago."--Tony Horwitz, author of A Voyage Long and Strange and Confederates in the Attic "I started reading within minutes of picking up this book, and was instantly mesmerized. It's a riveting detective story, a moving family saga, an enlightening if heartbreaking chapter in the history of America's treatment of people born with what we now call special needs." -- Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and You're Wearing That "This is a memoir that pushes the journalistic envelope . . . Luxenberg has written a fascinating personal story as well as a report on our communal response to the mentally ill." -- Helen Epstein, author of Where She Came From and Children of the Holocaust "A wise, affecting new memoir of family secrets and posthumous absolution." -- The Washington Post "Annie's Ghosts will resonate for many, whether the chords have to do with family secrets, the Depression, memories of a thriving Detroit, the Holocaust's horrors, or the immigrant experience." -- The Detroit Free Press

Download or read book The Newcomes Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family written by William Makepeace Thackeray and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 895 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Newcomes: Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family" by William Makepeace Thackeray tells the story of Colonel Thomas Newcome, a virtuous and upstanding character. It is equally the story of Colonel Newcome's son, Clive, who studies and travels for the purpose of becoming a painter, although the profession is frowned on by some of his relatives and acquaintances—notably Clive's snobbish, backstabbing cousin Barnes Newcome. Colonel Newcome goes out to India for decades, then returns to England where Clive meets his cousin Ethel. After years in England, the colonel returns to India for another several years and while he is there, Clive travels Europe and his love for Ethel waxes and wanes. Dozens of background characters appear, fade, and reappear.

Download or read book Hillbilly Elegy written by J. D. Vance and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-05-01 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER IS NOW A MAJOR-MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY RON HOWARD AND STARRING AMY ADAMS, GLENN CLOSE, AND GABRIEL BASSO "You will not read a more important book about America this year."—The Economist "A riveting book."—The Wall Street Journal "Essential reading."—David Brooks, New York Times Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

Download or read book The Hooker s Daughter written by Dale Stanten and published by The Hooker's Daughter. This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A child's journey into womanhood reveals a Jewish family embroiled in prostitution, shoplifting, stolen cars, homelessness, homosexuality, and terminal illness. This candid and shocking memoir delivers a stunning account of shame, survival, and triumph.