To Be Read Vote June 2022

My To Be Read List is a monthly meme hosted by Michelle at Because Reading.

How It Works

Each month you will make a post with three books from your TBR List (these books can be already on your kindle or shelf or books you might want to purchase) and add your link on the linky that will be provided on Michelle’s post. Your followers and the people on the linky will help you choose which book you will read next. The following Saturday you will announce the book that won. Then read the book and on the last Saturday of the month post a review.

HOWEVER, if you are mood reader and prefer to not review the book the same month you can always wait until the next month to do the review.

The Candidates

The Children's Blizzard
by Melanie Benjamin, Cassandra Campbell
Pages: 11
Published by Random House Audio
Publication Date January 12, 2021
Goodreads

The 'New York Times' bestselling author of 'The Aviator's Wife' reveals a little-known story of courage on the prairie: the freak blizzard that struck the Great Plains, threatening the lives of hundreds of immigrant homesteaders - especially their children.
The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a long cold spell, warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats - leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At just the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard struck without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn't get lost in the storm?
Based on actual oral histories of survivors, the novel follows the stories of Raina and Gerda Olsen, two sisters, both schoolteachers - one who becomes a hero of the storm, and one who finds herself ostracized in the aftermath. It's also the story of Anette Pedersen, a servant girl whose miraculous survival serves as a turning point in her life and touches the heart of Gavin Woodson, a newspaperman seeking redemption. It is Woodson and others like him who wrote the embellished news stories that lured immigrants across the sea to settle a pitiless land. Boosters needed immigrants to settle territories into states, and they didn't care what lies they told them to get them there--or whose land it originally was.
At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents' choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today - because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.
RUNNING TIME => 13hrs.
©2021 Melanie Benjamin (P)2021 Random House Audio

The Giver of Stars
by Jojo Moyes
Published by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing
Publication Date October 3, 2019
Goodreads

Set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond
When Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, she escapes her stifling life in England, but small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books on horseback as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. What happens to these women—and to the men they love—becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion.
Based on a true story rooted in America's past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic—a richly rewarding novel of women's friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.

The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2)
by Margaret Atwood, Ann Dowd, Bryce Dallas Howard, Mae Whitman, Derek Jacobi, Tantoo Cardinal
Published by Random House Audio
Publication Date September 10, 2019
Goodreads

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood is read by Ann Dowd, Bryce Dallas Howard and Mae Whitman with Derek Jacobi, Tantoo Cardinal and Margaret Atwood.
Margaret Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece, The Handmaid’s Tale, is a modern classic. Now she brings the iconic story to a dramatic conclusion in this riveting sequel.
More than 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.
Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets.
As Atwood unfolds The Testaments, she opens up the innermost workings of Gilead as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

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