By Collection Management Librarian Kathy
I love how much our community uses the library. Sometimes that means waiting for the hottest titles. Don’t fret! I can help you find a similar reading experience to THAT book you are waiting for or that you finally read and loved.
The Frozen River readalikes
Broken Fields by Marcie Rendon
Why you should try it: With a strong main character, a well-drawn setting, and suspense to spare, this is a good choice if you want a page-turning mystery.
Description: 1970s Minnesota. It’s spring in the Red River Valley, and Cash Blackbear is doing summer field work for a local farmer—until she finds him dead on the kitchen floor of the property’s rented farmhouse. The only possible witness to the murder is the young daughter of a Native field laborer who was renting the house. The girl, Shawnee, is too terrified to speak about what she’s witnessed, and her parents seem to have vanished. While Cash tries to find the missing mother before the Shawnee is placed in the care of a social worker—the same woman who placed Cash in foster care a decade earlier—another body turns up. Concerned about the girl’s fate, and with the help of local Sheriff Wheaton, Cash races against the clock to figure out the truth of what happened in the farmhouse.
Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Why you should try it: This is not a mystery but still has a lot of tension, a strong sense of place, and a complicated, well-drawn main character.
Description: Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, DC; and the past glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son, Roland. Until her husband’s new colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past, and she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings, which uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice. Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength.
The Great Mrs. Elias by Barbara Chase-Riboud
Why you should try it: While this isn’t a mystery either, it does have suspense. If you love a historical fiction book based on a real person, replete with a fully inhabited world, try this.
Description: A murder and a case of mistaken identity bring the police to Hannah Elias’ glitzy, five-story, 20-room mansion on Central Park West. Born in Philadelphia in the late 1800s, Hannah Elias has done things she’s not proud of to survive. Shedding her past, Hannah slips on a new identity before relocating to New York City to become as rich as a robber baron. Hannah quietly invests in the stock market, growing her fortune with the help of businessmen. As the money pours in, Hannah hides her millions across 29 banks. The unsolved murder turns Hannah’s world upside-down and threatens to destroy everything she’s built.
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
Why you should try it: If you are interested in a very different, yet still historical, perspective on midwifery, this book—full of magic, strong female characters, and excellent writing—fits the bill.
Description: Like her mother, Rue is an all-knowing midwife, healer, and conjurer of curses on the plantation of Marse Charles. Moving back and forth in time between the years before and after the Civil War, this novel tells the story of Rue, the families she cares for, and the mysteries and secrets surrounding the plantation owner’s daughter, Varina. At the heart of this story are the intimate bonds and transgressions among people and across racial divides, during both slavery and freedom times.
Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Why you should try it: This historical fiction novel is a morally complex tale centering on reproductive rights that is well-written, gripping, and based on true events.
Description: Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients, India and Erica, are children. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer
Why you should try it: This takes place over a hundred years earlier and in Britain, but also follows a midwife who must make terrible decisions about what she is told is true and what she sees with her own eyes.
Description: Martha Hallybread, a midwife, healer, and servant, has lived peacefully in her beloved seaside village of Cleftwater for more than four decades. Having lost her voice as a child, Martha has not spoken a word in years. One autumn morning, a sinister newcomer appears in town. The witchfinder, Silas Makepeace, has been blazing a trail of destruction along the coast, and now has Cleftwater in his sights. His arrival strikes fear into the heart of the community. Within a day, local women are being captured and detained, and Martha finds herself a silent witness to the hunt. Powerless to protest, Martha is enlisted to search the accused women for “devil’s marks.” She is caught between suspicion and betrayal; between shielding herself or condemning the women of the village.
About Kathy
Kathy is a Collection Management Librarian who loves reading, sharing, and talking about books. Her missions in life are to create communities of readers, convince folks that her official title should be “Book Pusher,” and refute that “disco” is a dirty word.