BITTER MEDICINE by Sara Paretsky

PBK/MYS

Paretsky, S.

A riveting Chicago-based whodunit which starts out with private detective V.I. Warshawski taking Consuelo, sixteen years old and pregnant, to a Schaumburg hospital for delivery of her premature baby. Neither mother nor baby live out the night. The next day the doctor who treated her is found brutally murdered, and Vic (short of Victoria) is hip-deep in a highly personal investigation. What she uncovers is an explosive nightmare of conspiracy and greed in which human life takes a back seat to the bottom line.

CARAMELO by Sandra Cisneros

FIC

CISNEROS
This is the epic tale of the Reyes family as it moves from 1920s Mexico City to 1950s
Chicago. This multigenerational story of a working class immigrant family has as its center Lala Reyes as she grows from childhood to young adulthood. Lala is the youngest in a family of seven and the only girl who regularly makes the trip from Chicago to The Awful Grandmother’s house in Mexico. She gradually forms an uneasy bond with her grandmother,inheriting from her the family stories, legends, and scandals. The family members’ destinies include experiences in the U.S. military, blue collar jobs, poverty and homelessness. Despite the harsh struggle to survive, the family never loses sight of its culture and traditions.

GODS IN ALABAMA by Joshilyn Jackson

FIC

JACKSON

Arlene Fleet is a graduate student living in Chicago. For reasons unbeknownst to the reader. Arlene had left home in Alabama at the age of eighteen, and promised God to never return, to remain celibate and to never tell a lie.

She has been able to keep her promises until her African-American boyfriend wants to accompany her to Alabama to meet her lily-white family. Arlene would rather die. Not only is Arlene reluctant to introduce him to her crazy and bigoted family, but she has a deep dark secret that threatens to come out. Arlene finds she is no longer able to keep her promises.

WHEN MADELINE WAS YOUNG by Jane Hamilton

FIC
HAMILTON

This novel is set in 1950's Chicago with Aaron and Julia McIver and their two children, Timothy (Mac) and Louise. What sets their family apart is the presence of Madeline who has the mental capacity of a seven-year-old since a bicycle accident left her with a traumatic brain injury. Mac gradually becomes aware that Madeline, his adult "sister," is actually his father''s first wife.

Mac tells the story looking back from middle age and a life spent in medicine. Preparing to attend the funeral of a cousin's son, killed in combat, Mac reflects on the complexities and tensions, the relationships, rivalries and regrets within his own family.

This is a fascinating book about a family dynamic that is intriguing and unusual.