In this poignant, candid chronicle by season, well educated journalist, Kristen Kimball writes how she and her now husband, Mark, infused new life into an Essex Farm, and lost their hearts to it. This is a story about the love between a man and a woman, as well as the love between farmers, a community and a farm. It is a story about a man, who so believed in a dream that he made it materialize in spite of being surrounded by skeptics.  It is about a woman, who lost her heart to a man and to the land. This is a powerful book that proves that life is about so much more than money.  Nonfiction

Food pantry donations for Thanksgiving

Laura’s Library (Bee Caves Road)……  at 11:30 AM
 

Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin. This is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail.  Fiction

Carolyn Schlithus’s kitchen…….Black History Month  at 11:30 Southern cooking
 

In this beautiful memoir, Yang recounts the harrowing journey of her family from Laos to a refugee camp in Thailand to the U.S. Eventually settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, their struggle was not over.  Determined to tell the story of both her family and her people, Yang intimately chronicles the immigrant experience from the Hmong perspective, providing a long-overdue contribution to the history and literature of ethnic America.  Nonfiction

Lunch out…..Mama Fu’s off Brodie Lane 11:00 AM
 

Peter Kavanaugh uncovers the spirituality of twenty of music's timeless giants, revealing legacies of the soul as diverse as the masterpieces they created. Warmly written, beautifully illustrated, and complete with listening recommendations for each composer, Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers is a fascinating look at the inner flame that lit the works of these masters.  Nonfiction

WHPC Parlor……Music Guests  11:30AM 

 

This novel of two Native American women abandoned by their tribe in the Alaskan Yukon won the 1993 Western State Book award.  This will offer readers vivid insight into a Native American culture. At the same time, it rises above the particulars of time and place to become a metaphor with a message or inspiration for all members of the human race.  Fiction

WHPC Parlor…….Alaskan food and fare  11:30AM
 

Cecelia (Cee-Cee) Honeycutt is a twelve year old girl tending her mentally ill mother in Ohio when the mother is suddenly, violently killed. The absentee father sends broken-hearted, emotionally exhausted, Cee-Cee off to abide with a great-aunt in Savannah, GA. Eccentric characters, including a black cook, Oletta, who conjures recipes for Cee-Cee's heart as well as stomach, funny neighbors who bring the joy of laughter back to Cee-Cee, and Aunt Tootie who loves Cee-Cee towards wellness alight off the pages of this bittersweet tale.  Fiction

Year of the child….Mental Illness   11:00 AM for lunch
 

Brown, a master of romantic suspense, makes a huge genre leap in her latest novel. Radically switching gears, she sets this gentle tale in Depression-era Texas.   This bittersweet morality play also features a hardworking single mother, an autistic child, and a mysterious boarder with a terminal medical condition. The moment Ella Barron agrees to let a room to David Rainwater, her hardscrabble circumstances are irrevocably altered. As the townspeople, farmers, and ranchers struggle both economically and spiritually, a malevolent evil in the form of a menacing town bully threatens their tenuous hold on survival. But in the end, Rainwater leaves behind a precious final gift and a lasting legacy of grace and compassion.  Fiction

Year of the Child…..Autism  11:00 AM
 

 

Mason writes eloquently and without a tinge of self-pity of her long, nightmarish journey from September 1948, when her beloved 13-year-old brother, Gaston, died of polio and she contracted it soon after; confined to an iron lung, she rarely left it for the next 61 years, while living in their rural Lattimore, N.C., home so that her devoted mother could care for her. Nonfiction

Year of the child…..Good Health

Celebrate 60 Years since the Polio Vaccine….guests from the March of Dimes.   11:00 AM for lunch