Joan Muyskens Pursley
As Robson Ranch Library patrons know, our collection is constantly evolving. Below are a few recent additions donated by Robson residents or purchased by Friends of the Library (FOL). Others are featured on the library’s website, www.robsonlibrary.org.
• Flight of the Wild Swan, by Melissa Pritchard. This is a sweeping yet intimate story of Florence Nightingale who overcame Victorian hierarchies, familial expectations, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness to use her hard-won acclaim as a battlefield nurse to bring nursing out of its shadowy, disreputable status and elevate it to a skilled practice and compassionate art (on the FOL shelf).
• Life: My Story Through History, by Pope Francis. For the first time, Pope Francis tells the story of his life as he looks back on the momentous world events that have changed history, from his earliest years during the 1939 outbreak of World War II to the turmoil of today (on the FOL shelf).
• Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival, by Tom Clavin. Here is the largely untold, riveting true story of Joe Moser who, on Aug. 13, 1944, set off on his 44th combat mission over occupied France. Soon he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly Nazi concentration camps (in the nonfiction, War section).
• The Secret Life of Sunflowers, by Malta Molnar. This novel is based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law who inherited van Gogh’s paintings. They were all she had, and they weren’t worth anything. She was a 28-year-old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce van Gogh’s legacy to the world (on the FOL shelf).
• Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench. For the first time, the actress opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career. In a series of intimate conversations with actor and director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans (in the nonfiction, Memoir section).
• When We Were Bright and Beautiful, by Jilian Medoff. Long-listed for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize for Fiction, this is an electrifying, twisty, and deeply emotional family drama set on Manhattan’s glittering Upper East Side that explores the dark side of love, the limits of loyalty, and the high cost of truth (located in hardback fiction).
• The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, by Hampton Sides. The Wall Street Journal called this a “thrilling and superbly crafted” account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated (on the FOL shelf).