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Author: M.E. Hembroff

Genre: Middle Grade Mystery
Date Published: October 2015

Book Description:
Bess's mother moves them to Pineview, away from her best friend Megan, and she terribly misses her. Six months earlier, Bess�s father died in a car crash, and she�s also in the midst of recovering from the final stages of polio. She's in a sad and lonely place.

From the moment she and her mother settle into their new home, Bess hears whispering voices and encounters a ghostly figure in the well-kept garden and in her dreams. She can�t make sense of everything and so shares her observations with Megan by writing her regular letters.

During the summer, she makes new friends, including an orange and white tomcat that she names Pumpkin, and her new neighbour Josie. With the help of Mrs. O�Toole, the woman who watches her, Bess continues to recover, both physically and emotionally. She becomes more and more curious about the garden and the unexplained clues that she finds there.

Author: John H. Paddison and Charles D. Orvik

Genre: Literary Fiction

Book Description:
The Brothers� Keepers, a modern literary novel, is a collaborative work written by John H. Paddison and Charles D. Orvik. Based on the book�s tone, theme, and literary intention, which are similar in style to Sherwood Anderson�s classic Winesburg, Ohio, this work will prove to be a significant contribution to contemporary literature.

As a novel dealing with the saga of one family, the work closely analyzes an ongoing cultural myth of small Midwest American towns and families�that is, the idea and ideal of family values that have come to symbolize that geographic region. Much like Richard Russo recently did in his novel Empire Falls, the story emerges from within a historical framework. The story takes place in the Northeastern part of North Dakota, in the fictional town of Farmington, during and after the Great Depression. The storyline develops around the neglect and then abandonment of five young boys�the Lambson brothers�by their alcoholic mother and their drifter father, and indeed by society in general. Having been exhaustively researched, the novel details in a sensitive yet realistic way the brothers� development under very adverse physical and social conditions and the five boys� eventual outcome. Events of the story are structured so as to extract meaning from the youngsters� trials; the narrative voice is sensitive yet forceful in adding understanding of their tribulations, thus bringing light to two social ills that plague America today�child neglect and child abuse.

Set primarily in the post-depression Midwest, the novel follows five young brothers--Dewey, Duane,Lloyd, Leeland, and Darrell Lambson�from childhood to adulthood. Their parents essentially abandon them in the late 1930s. The narrative focus of the novel is the detailed description of the Lambson boys� day-to-day struggle to survive physically, emotionally, and socially. After their father leaves them, the boys live on a dilapidated farm on the outskirts of the agricultural community of Farmington, North Dakota with their alcoholic mother. In her own pursuit of escape, she often leaves the children to their own means for extended periods of time. The brothers� hardships form a strong, familial bond between them�the only definition of family that they can construct from their aberrant circumstances. The broader narrative, though, becomes an attempt to understand how a society that traditionally has always placed so much emphasis on family and family values, at least seemingly, can condone such treatment of the five youngsters. This probing of social responsibility is relevant to today�s society, with children increasingly becoming the victims of abuse and neglect.