Dick Estell continues reading from
Charlatan
by Pope Brock
Crown Publishers, NY, 2008
(since July 14)
In 1917, John R. Brinkley -- America's most brazen young con man -- set up a medical practice and introduced an outlandish surgical method using goat glands to restore the fading virility of local farmers. It was all nonsense, of course, but thousands of paying customers quickly turned "Dr." Brinkley into America's richest and most famous surgeon.
Thumbing his nose at American regulators, he built the world's most powerful radio transmitter just across the Rio Grande to offer sundry cures, and killed or maimed patients by the score. Brinkley became the most creative criminal this country has ever produced.
Charlatan is a marvelous portrait of a boundlessly audacious rogue on the loose in an America that was ripe for bamboozling.
Beginning August 14
Desperate Passage
by Ethan Parick
Oxford University Press, NY, 2008
In late October 1846, the last wagon train of that year's westward migration stopped overnight before resuming its arduous climb over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, unaware that a fearsome storm was gathering force.
After months of grueling travel, the 81 men, women, and children would be trapped for a brutal winter with little food and only primitive shelter.
The conclusion is known: by spring of that year, the Donner Party was synonymous with the most harrowing extremes of human survival. But until now, the full story of what happened -- and what it tells us about human nature and about America's westward expansion -- remained shrouded in myth.
Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa states "this sober, unflinching look at one of the great tragedies of America's pioneering past tells us a great deal that is new about the Donner Party's trails."
Beginning September 12
Letter from Point Cleaer
by Dennis McFarland
Henry Holt & Company, NY, 2007
The Owen children long ago left their family home in Point Clear, Alabama, in favor of points north. But when their father takes ill, the youngest, Bonnie, who has spent a decade in Manhattan as an unsuccessful actress, returns to care for him. Soon after his death, Bonnie falls in love with and marries a handsome evangelical preacher.
When they receive Bonnie's letter announcing her marriage, her brother and sister head for Alabama, believing they must extricate their troublesome sister form her latest mistake. Little does her new husband know that Bonnie's brother, Morris, is gay and "hubby" quickly undertakes a campaign to save him.
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