ENGL 101 Enhanced Book Club Titles for Fall 2018

Boyden, Joseph. Three Day Road. Penguin Books; Reprint edition (April 25, 2006)
ISBN-13: 978-0143037071 Paperback
Best friends Xavier and Elijah are both expert sharpshooters and, using the field craft they learned hunting in the forests of Hudson Bay, quickly become accomplished snipers. Elijah is outgoing and boastful, while Xavier is quiet and reserved, but both are deadly efficient soldiers. A parallel story line tells of Niska, Xavier's aunt, a Cree Indian prophet and healer, as she tells of the sad decline of Cree culture and waits for her nephew to come home. As the war drags on, one of the men's addiction to drugs and killing causes him to take extreme risks; when he finally commits murder to hide the ugly truth, his friend sees only one solution to save his own soul.
 
Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers. Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint Edition (June 26, 2017)
ISBN-13: 978-0525509714 Paperback
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for his family. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses’ summer home. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can at last gain a foothold in America. However, the world of great power and privilege conceals troubling secrets. When the financial world is rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Jongas are desperate to keep Jende’s job—even as their marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.
 
Danticat, Edwidge.   The Farming of Bones.  Soho Press, 2013.
ISBN-13: 978-1616953492   Paperback
Amabelle Désir, a young Haitian woman living in the Dominican Republic, has built herself a life as the servant and companion of the wife of a wealthy colonel. She and Sebastian, a cane worker, are deeply in love and plan to marry.  But Amabelle's  world collapses when a wave of genocidal violence, driven by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, leads to the slaughter of Haitian workers.  Amabelle and Sebastian are separated, and she desperately flees the tide of violence for a Haiti she barely remembers. 
 
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. Anchor; first Anchor Books Edition (March 19, 1998)
ISBN-13: 978-0385490818 Paperback
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now.


Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. Anchor; Reprint Edition (January 30, 2016)
ISBN-13: 978-0345804327 Paperback
Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Whitehead's conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation.