Can't wait to get to heaven : a novel by Fannie Flagg. Random House, 2006.

I'd been reading a number of dark books recently, and decided it was time to read something lighter. This was the "lightest" on the list from which we chose our next book club discussion title.

Aunt Elner, of indeterminate age because the family Bible had gone missing, but certainly in her late 80s, has decided to make fig jam, and climbs a ladder into her fig tree. She is attacked by a swarm of wasps, falls from the ladder and dies.

Then we watch as small-town politics, families, and communication channels all gear up to handle this unexpected occurrance, from niece to trucker, from hospital attorney to neighbor, from radio station to newspaper. Through their eyes, we see Aunt Elner's life and the positive effects she's had on pretty much everyone in her town. Neighbors clean her house, take care of her cat, wash her laundry - and discover a loaded pistol in the bottom of her laundry hamper!

As it turns out the doctors were wrong - Aunt Elner is, in fact, alive, despite being sent to the hospital's morgue, and returns home after a stay in the Intensive Care Unit. This gives everyone a "second chance" to examine their lives and their relationships with each other. What was billed as "pathos," "side-splitting," and "serio-comic" turns out to be a parable, forcing not only the characters, but also readers to ask, "Why are we here? Are we living our lives in the best way we can for others and for ourselves? What is heaven?"

As for the mystery of the gun, ...

The Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder. Perennial Library, 1986, c1927

I decided to re-read this slim, Pulitzer-winning volume after spotting it on a re-shelve truck at the library. (I've been finding quite a few good books that way, recently!) I opened it to a random page, read a paragraph, and was captured by the lyrical, descriptive language. I read this book when I was in the 8th grade - a little while ago - and wondered if I would find more depth and meaning now that I am older.

The story involves the failure of a bridge over a Peruvian river, plunging five people to their deaths. Brother Juniper, on his way to cross the bridge himself, witnesses the accident and wonders - not questioning the Higher Authority who allowed it to happen - why those people fell, and why at that particular time in their lives. He then embarks on a quest to find out what was happening in each person's life in the time before their deaths. After years of research, his notes, compiled into several volumes, are declared heretical and they and Brother Juniper are burned to death.

Many of Wilder's works incorporate the theme of the Day of Judgment, though not in a pedantic way. On the day the bridge fell, each victim had reached a crossroad, and made a decision. My take-away from this re-reading: it is always possible to refocus the direction of one's life, no matter how difficult it may seem to do. It involves putting the old "scripts" behind and writing new ones. It requires faith. And love. The bridge is love.

"The Double Bind", by Christopher A. Bohjalian. Shaye Areheart Books, c2007.

Wow! Had no clue, when I selected this book, that it would be a two-fer. The jacket blurb said it draws strongly from Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", which I had not read, so I read it first. Good thing! Bohjalian seamlessly integrates the Gatsby characters and setting into his novel, and then delivers a double-whammy at the end that caught me flat-footed.

Laurel works in a homeless shelter, and because of her interest in photography, she is given a box of old photos and negatives when one of the shelter's clients dies. The mandate was to perhaps mount an exhibit that could become a fund-raiser. However, among the photos is one that triggers flashbacks recalling an incident in which she was attacked and very nearly raped while riding her bike on a mountain trail, and she becomes obsessed with finding out more about the man who took the picture.

Bohjalian presents the delusional world of mental illness so cleverly and convincingly, that the novel's end caught me completely unprepared. I had to go back and re-read whole sections to see how I could possibly have misread all the clues! And of course, upon re-reading after learning the outcome, the layers of the back story were clearly apparent. On the whole, a sobering read that illustrates the power of the mind when dealing with trauma.

The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James. Riverhead Books, 2009.

At the turn of the 18th Century in Jamaica, Lilith is born to a teen slave-child, black as black, but with startling green eyes. Her young mother does not survive the birth, and Lilith is placed with a retired slave woman to be raised. But those green eyes prove she is a member of a select sisterhood with a destiny far beyond the daily labors of a "field nigger." At a time when slave rebellions are happening frequently, Lilith is educated about the ways and facts of servitude on a sugar plantation, and is She is also taught to read, a skill taught in the dark, at night, for fear of being discovered. Ultimately, when she is old enough, she is invited to attend the monthly meetings of the "night women." At a time far removed from today's texting, tweeting and live television coverage, when slaves were not permitted to ride horses nor to leave the plantation unaccompanied, the word is still able to get around ...

The author, who is himself Jamaican, uses strong, graphic language to capture the humor, pathos, grit, and cruelty of the plantation and its people. And because I have family in Jamaica, I know the Jamaican cadence of his characters' voices is completely authentic. After reading this book, I understand a little more about the attitudes of my family, and you will understand why slavery needed to be abolished.

The soloist [electronic resource] : a lost dream, an unlikely friendship, and the redemptive power of music, by Steve Lopez. Blackstone Audio, 2008.

This is Sacramento's "One Book" title for 2009, and the library, in partnership with other local agencies, is planning a series of programs in the next month around it, including an author talk on September 24.

Musical talent runs in my family. My grandfather formed and outfitted the Waianae Plantation band, purchasing the instruments in San Francisco and teaching the members to play them. He was also an in-demand pianist, violinist, and zither player, as reported in the society pages of the local newspapers. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are also musical, and became professional and amateur musicians. I learned to read music before I could read words. We also have a disabled musician in our family. I think that's why this story resonated with me.

The soloist, Nathaniel Ayers, is a former student at Juilliard who dropped out of school and society when he became incapacitated by schizophrenia. He fetched up on Skid Row in Los Angeles, where a reporter, author Steve Lopez, hearing the music he was making on a broken-down, 2-stringed violin, saw a story worth telling. Over the next year, he befriended Mr. Ayers and persuaded him to move into a shelter and take up music again. The frustrations of dealing with the homeless mentally ill are clearly expressed, making the small gains Mr. Ayers has achieved even more precious. Overall, the transformations that affect all the characters are emotional and durable, and readers are not exempt!

The Heretic's Daughter, by Kathleen Kent. Little, Brown and Co., 2008.

Ten-year old Sarah Carrier is both an observer and participant in the events leading to the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, and the story reveals itself from her point of view - fuzzy on the politics and implications of the historical period described, but full of details about the daily life and hardships of the families making new lives in the New World. And as the tension mounts towards the end of the novel and Sarah's mother is hanged as a witch, you have to piece things together carefully to figure out who the real "heretic" is.

Whitethorn Woods, by Maeve Binchy. A.A. Knopf, 2007.

Seemingly unrelated vignettes of men, women and children, all with ties to St. Ann's Well in the village of Rossmore in Ireland, are woven together in this novel. From whores to spinsters, from brilliant to "soft", from honorable to base - each is affected by the myths surrounding the well and the plan to obliterate it with the imminent building of a new road right through Whitethorn Woods. Unlikely pairings prove that St. Ann may still be working her miracles, especially when the final plot twist is revealed in the last paragraphs.