OSL Library – The Intercom, February 2020

Winter One Church One Read
The Library committee has selected This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger as its Winter One Church One Read title. Copies are available for checkout in the Library, and the discussion is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. on March 22 in the Office Conference Room.

This Tender Land is a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression. In 1932, the Lincoln School in Minnesota is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated.

It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.

Warm up With a Good Book
Be sure to visit the snow and winter book and movie displays in the OSL Library. To make your selection easy, a large number of items are on separate displays, one for children and youth and one for adults.

Library Hours
Sunday 8:30 a.m.–12:15
Monday 9:00 a.m.–noon
Tuesday 9:00 a.m.–noon
Wednesday 9:00 a.m.–7:30 p.m.
Thursday 9:00 a.m.–noon
Friday Closed
2nd Saturday of the month 10:00 a.m.–noon and 4:30–6:30 p.m.

In search of answers, Calvin takes his young son on the road, traveling across the country to the annual rodeo in his small Iowa hometown. Along the way, a stop at the Baseball Hall of Fame turns into an impromptu lesson about racism and segregation.

In Niagara Falls, a day of arcade games and go-karts unexpectedly morphs into a titanic struggle between father and son. A stop in Chicago rips the scars off old wounds, and back in Iowa, Calvin is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: What if his flaws and family history doom him to repeat the mistakes of the past?

In this unforgettable debut memoir, Calvin Hennick holds a mirror up to both himself and modern America in an urgent and timely story that all parents, and indeed all Americans, need to read.

Additional New Titles for Adults
• Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict
• The Pale-faced Lie by David Crow
• The Good Neighbor by A. J. Banner

How does he match his clothes? Know where to walk? Cook with a gas stove? Pour a glass of sweet tea without spilling it? Genie thinks Grandpop must be the bravest guy he’s ever known, but he starts to notice that his grandfather never leaves the house—as in never. When he finds the secret room that Grandpop is always disappearing into—a room so full of songbirds and plants that it’s almost as if it’s been pulled inside-out—he begins to wonder if his grandfather is really so brave after all.

Then Ernie lets him down in the bravery department. It’s his fourteenth birthday, and Grandpop says to become a man, you have to learn how to shoot a gun. Genie thinks that is awesome until he realizes Ernie has no interest in learning how to shoot. None. Nada. Dumbfounded by Ernie’s reluctance, Genie is left to wonder—is bravery and becoming a man only about proving something, or is it just as important to own up to what you won’t do?

Additional New Titles for Middle- and High-School Youth
• Free Lunch by Rex Ogle
• Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson
• Dog Man: Fetch-22 by Dav Pilkey