April book and date choices

Our March meeting was such a delight (thanks, Lauren, for hosting), and our next host is Gina Ma...

Gina has offered up two choices for the April book, although she asked that I tell you she would really prefer the first option... They are:

Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
and
Handle with Care, by Jodi Picoult

The dates she has offered up are April 21/22, or May 5/6. You can vote for as MANY as you are available for. So if you're available all 4 dates, check all 4 boxes!

Please vote for your book and date of choice in the poll to the right, and hopefully we'll have them both decided this week and we can get going reading!

Here are blurbs about the 2 books:

Loving Frank:
Amazon Significant Seven, August 2007: It's a rare treasure to find a historically imagined novel that is at once fully versed in the facts and unafraid of weaving those truths into a story that dares to explore the unanswered questions. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. Mamah's bright, earnest spirit is particularly tender in the context of her time and place, which afforded her little opportunity to realize the intellectual life for which she yearned. Loving Frank is a remarkable literary achievement, tenderly acute and even-handed in even the most heartbreaking moments, and an auspicious debut from a writer to watch.

Handle with Care:
Starred Review. Perennial bestseller Picoult (Change of Heart) delivers another engrossing family drama, spiced with her trademark blend of medicine, law and love. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe's daughter, Willow, was born with brittle bone disease, a condition that requires Charlotte to act as full-time caregiver and has strained their emotional and financial limits. Willow's teenaged half-sister, Amelia, suffers as well, overshadowed by Willow's needs and lost in her own adolescent turmoil. When Charlotte decides to sue for wrongful birth in order to obtain a settlement to ensure Willow's future, the already strained family begins to implode. Not only is the defendant Charlotte's longtime friend, but the case requires Charlotte and Sean to claim that had they known of Willow's condition, they would have terminated the pregnancy, a statement that strikes at the core of their faith and family. Picoult individualizes the alternating voices of the narrators more believably than she has previously, and weaves in subplots to underscore the themes of hope, regret, identity and family, leading up to her signature closing twists.

PS - I finished Atonement about 3 days after the bookgroup meeting, and so wish I had finished it beforehand. I LOVED it, especially the middle part (which a few people said they didn't like as much)... I guess I would have proven much more adept at discussing and even debating why I thought that part was so great if I had finished it in time... Anyway, that is definitely motivation for me to work on using my time wisely for our next books and get them read!