I Found My Tribe: a memoir by Ruth Fitzmaurice

A transformative, euphoric memoir about finding solace in the unexpected for readers of H is for Hawk, It's Not Yet Dark, and When Breath Becomes Air.

Ruth's tribe are her lively children and her filmmaker and author husband Simon Fitzmaurice who has ALS and can only communicate with his eyes. Ruth's other "tribe" are the friends who gather at the cove in Greystones, Co. Wicklow, and regularly throw themselves into the freezing cold water, just for kicks.

The Tragic Wives' Swimming Club, as they jokingly call themselves, meet to cope with the extreme challenges life puts in their way, not to mention the monster waves rolling over the horizon. Swimming is just one of the daily coping strategies as Ruth fights to preserve the strong but now silent connection with her husband. As she tells the story of their marriage, from diagnosis to their long-standing precarious situation, Ruth also charts her passion for swimming in the wild Irish Sea--culminating in a midnight swim under the full moon on her wedding anniversary.

An invocation to all of us to love as hard as we can, and live even harder, I Found My Tribe is an urgent and uplifting letter to a husband, family, friends, the natural world, and the brightness of life.

213 pages (March 2018)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Author Interview with the journal

Ruth Fitzmaurice discusses the first time she showed the manuscript to her husband:

Title Read-alikes: The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch; The Vow by Kim Carpenter; Beauty in the Broken Places by Allison Pataki; Until I Say Good-Bye by Susan Spencer-Wendel; Wondering Who You Are by Sonya Lea; Jan's Story by Barry Petersen; Everybody's Got Something by Robin Roberts; The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs; The Cookie Cure by Susan Stachler; The Smallest Lights in the Universe by Sara Seager; Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley; After the Silence by Louise O'Neill; and Elsewhere by Rosita Boland.

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen

In this powerful psychological suspense debut, when a woman’s life is shattered, she is faced with a devastating question: What if everything she thought was normal and good and true…wasn’t?

Clara Lawson is torn from her life in an instant. Without warning, her home is invaded by armed men, and she finds herself separated from her beloved husband and daughters. The last thing her husband yells to her is to say nothing.

In chapters that alternate between past and present, the novel slowly unpeels the layers of Clara’s fractured life. We see her growing up, raised with her sisters by the stern Mama and Papa G, becoming a poised and educated young woman, falling desperately in love with the forbidden son of her adoptive parents. We see her now, sequestered in an institution, questioned by men and women who call her a different name—Diana—and who accuse her husband of unspeakable crimes. As recollections of her past collide with new revelations, Clara must question everything she thought she knew, to come to terms with the truth of her history and to summon the strength to navigate her future.

314 pages (August 2016)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: Felicia's Journey by William Trevor; Iodine by Haven Kimmel; The Cellar by Minette Walters; Undone by Karin Slaughter; Final Girls by Riley Sager; Black Out by Lisa Unger; Never Tell by Lisa Gardner; Unsub by Meg Gardiner; Behind the Red Door by Megan Collins; An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks; The Wives by Tarryn Fisher; The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica; and The End of Her by Shari Lapena.

Citizen Scientist: searching for heroes and hope in an age of extinction by Mary Ellen Hannibal

Citizen science might just be our last, best chance to fight extinction. But is there really hope for threatened species? Mary Ellen Hannibal needed to find out.

Hannibal, an award-winning writer and emerging emissary from scientists to the public, sets out to become a citizen scientist herself. In search of vanishing species, she wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains. The data she collects will help environmental research—but her most precious discovery might be her fellow citizen scientists: a heroic cast of volunteers devoting long hours to helping scientists measure—and even slow—today’s unprecedented mass extinction.

A consummate reporter, Hannibal digs into the origins of the tech-savvy citizen science movement—tracing it back through centuries of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she also examines her own past and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. Her personal loss only fuels her quest to bear witness to life, and so she ultimately returns her gaze to the wealth of species still left to fight for.

Combining research and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescues herself from an odyssey of loss—with a new kind of science.

423 pages (September 2016)

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Book Club Kit from the Network of the National Library of Medicine

 

To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Mary Ellen Hannibal TEDx Talk:

Title Read-alikes: The Nature of Nature by Enric Sala; Unstoppable Global Warming by S. Fred Singer; Wild Things, Wild Places by Jane Alexander; Earth in Human Hands by David Harry Grinspoon; Seeds of Hope by Jane Goodall; A World for My Daughter by Alejandro Frid; The Edge of Extinction by Jules N. Pretty; The Human Age by Diane Ackerman; The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers; What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz; The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio; Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie; and Weather by Jenny Offill.

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez

Arturo and Alma Rivera have lived their whole lives in Mexico. One day, their beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter, Maribel, sustains a terrible injury, one that casts doubt on whether she’ll ever be the same. And so, leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel can get better.

When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panama, sees Maribel in a Dollar Tree store, it is love at first sight. It’s also the beginning of a friendship between the Rivera and Toro families, whose web of guilt and love and responsibility is at this novel’s core.

Woven into their stories are the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Latin America. Their journeys and their voices will inspire you, surprise you, and break your heart.

Suspenseful, wry and immediate, rich in spirit and humanity, The Book of Unknown Americans is a work of rare force and originality that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American.

285 pages (June 2014)

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Reading Guide from Vintage Books (Knopf/Doubleday Publishing Group)

 

To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok; How Are You Going to Save Yourself by J. M. Holmes; We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh; Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende; Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng; Saints for All Occasions by J. Courtney Sullivan; The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice; The Leavers by Lisa Ko; Afterlife by Julia Alvarez; I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez; The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi; and The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

A magical debut novel for readers of Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman's myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice.

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind - she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles nearer, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed - this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

322 pages (January 2017)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

 

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Title Read-alikes: The Girl with Ghost Eyes by M. H. Boroson; The Bone Mother by David Demchuk; The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow; Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente; A Discovery of Witches by Deborah E. Harkness; The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern; The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst; Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo; Lady of the Horses by Judith Tarr; Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik; The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty; The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab; and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.