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A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota
-- edited by Sun Yung Shin
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The second selection for One Book | One Minnesota is
A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota
, edited by Sun Yung Shin (Minnesota Historical Society Press). Sixteen of Minnesota’s best writers provide a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a person of color in Minnesota. They give readers a splendid gift: the gift of touching another human being’s inner reality, behind masks and veils and politeness. They bring us generously into experiences that we must understand if we are to come together in real relationships.
EBooks are available now through eBooks Minnesota and you can place holds in
our catalog
as well. We invite you to read the book and join a book discussion. Stay tuned for more details on upcoming access to author videos as well.
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One Book | One Minnesota is presented by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, as the Minnesota Center for the Book, in partnership with State Library Services. Program partners also include Council of Regional Public Library System Administrators, Minitex (a joint program of the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Office of Higher Education), the Minnesota Department of Education, and Minnesota Historical Society Press.
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Select libraries around the region are reopening with modified services. We are now offering two service models, browsing appointments and express service.
Both models allow community members to enter the building, check out materials, pick up holds, browse the collection and utilize other library services. For express service an appointment is not required and you may enter the library, as long as occupancy limits allow, anytime during express service hours.
In all locations, if you wish to use a computer, you will need to make an appointment.
You can sign up for a browsing appointment or computer appointment by calling us, Monday - Friday 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. or by
going online
.
The environment in the library has been modified:
- A sneeze guard has been placed on the service desk
- Hand sanitizing stations are available
- Seating has been reduced
- Children’s play areas/equipment will not be available
- Everyone entering the building will be asked to wear a face covering. Disposable masks will be available if you do not have one. If you are unable to wear a mask, we will still be offering curbside services in all locations.
To see which services are being offered in which locations and when please visit each
library's location page
on our website. We are working to offer the highest level of service as possible in each location; we do ask that everyone please be patient as we work through the many hurdles, such as cleaning services, staffing, permissions from our local government partners, etc., that must be overcome before re-opening a location.
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The Great Influenza
by John Barry
Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research,
The Great Influenza
provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart."
At the height of World War I, history's most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.
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The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
by Josie Silver
Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit,
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life’s crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
Lydia and Freddie. Freddie and Lydia. They’d been together for more than a decade and Lydia thought their love was indestructible. But she was wrong. On Lydia’s twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.
So now it’s just Lydia, and all she wants is to hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life—and perhaps even love—again.
But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.
Lydia is pulled again and again through the doorway to her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there’s an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there’s someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.
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The Vanishing Half
by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut
The Mothers
, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
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The Persuasion
by Iris Johansen
When Eve Duncan's daughter, Jane MacGuire, becomes a killer's target, Jane must team up with longtime love interest Seth Caleb in this suspenseful novel from the #1 bestselling author of
Smokescreen.
Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past.
Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself...and wants Seth Caleb dead.
As Jane and Seth chase down their blood-thirsty adversary, they also have to reckon with their own epic love story. Can they finally commit to a life together, no matter how uncertain? As the two come face to face with danger, one thing is made clear: it will take both of them to confront and defeat this evil.
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The Black Swan of Paris
by Karen Robards
Paris, 1944
Celebrated singer Genevieve Dumont is both a star and a smokescreen. An unwilling darling of the Nazis, the chanteuse’s position of privilege allows her to go undetected as an ally to the resistance.
When her estranged mother, Lillian de Rocheford, is captured by Nazis, Genevieve knows it won’t be long before the Gestapo succeeds in torturing information out of Lillian that will derail the upcoming allied invasion. The resistance movement is tasked with silencing her by any means necessary—including assassination. But Genevieve refuses to let her mother become yet one more victim of the war. Reuniting with her long-lost sister, she must find a way to navigate the perilous cross-currents of Occupied France undetected—and in time to save Lillian’s life.
For fans of
The Nightingale,
The Women in the Castle and
The Lost Girls of Paris, this exquisite novel illuminates three women’s strength, courage and capacity for unconditional love.
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The Streel
by Mary Logue
When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America.
The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland’s potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul—or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed.
Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue’s new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.
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The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (And Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did)
by
Philippa Perry
Every parent wants their child to be happy and every parent wants to avoid screwing them up (the way their parents did!). But how do you do that?
In this absorbing, clever, and warm book, renowned psychotherapist Philippa Perry tells us what really matters and what behavior it is important to avoid--the vital dos and don'ts of parenting.
Her approach begins with parents themselves and their own psychological make-up and history--and how that in turn influences one's parenting.
Instead of mapping out the "perfect" plan, Perry offers a big-picture look at the elements that lead to good parent-child relationships. This refreshing judgment-free book will help you to:
- Understand how your own upbringing may affect your parenting
- Accept that you will make mistakes and learn what you can do about them
- Break negative cycles and patterns
- Handle your own and child's feelings
- Understand what different behaviors communicate
Full of sage and sane advice,
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
is one every parent will want to read and every child will wish their parents had.
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Disney's Land
by Richard Snow
A propulsive history chronicling the conception and creation of Disneyland, the masterpiece California theme park, as told like never before by popular historian Richard Snow.
One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” Despite his wealth and fame, exactly no one wanted Disney to build such a park. Not his brother Roy, who ran the company’s finances; not the bankers; and not his wife, Lillian. Amusement parks at that time, such as Coney Island, were a generally despised business, sagging and sordid remnants of bygone days. Disney was told that he would only be heading toward financial ruin.
But Walt persevered, initially financing the park against his own life insurance policy and later with sponsorship from ABC and the sale of thousands and thousands of Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Disney assembled a talented team of engineers, architects, artists, animators, landscapers, and even a retired admiral to transform his ideas into a soaring yet soothing wonderland of a park. The catch was that they had only a year and a day in which to build it.
On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates…and the first day was a disaster. Disney was nearly suicidal with grief that he had failed on a grand scale. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. Eight hundred million visitors have flocked to the park since then. In Disney’s Land, Richard Snow brilliantly presents the entire spectacular story, a wild ride from vision to realization, and an epic of innovation and error that reflects the uniqueness of the man determined to build “the happiest place on earth” with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.
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