Join the VILA Book Club
Please join us for the next meeting of the VILA Book Club sponsored by iBUG Today.
WHEN: Thursday, April 10, 2025, 6:30 to 8:00 PM Central Time
We will be discussing the following book.
Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult, DB68615
Charlotte's daughter Willow has osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), which requires constant care from Willow's parents and sister to avoid broken bones. When Willow is five, an exhausted Charlotte learns she can sue her friend and obstetrician Piper for not spotting Willow's OI on an early ultrasound. 15 hours 12 minutes
Facilitator: Pete Lane
Future book readings for the next couple of months are as follows. Note: all books are available on NLS BARD.
May 8
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo, DB95730 (Angie Panzica) Marilyn and David's four daughters are each in a state of unrest. Young widow Wendy soothes herself with booze and younger men. Violet battles self-doubt when her past resurfaces. Liza finds herself pregnant by a man she's not sure she loves. Youngest daughter Grace begins living a lie. 20 hours, 35 minutes
June 12
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, DB115655 (Sarah Potok)
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe. As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us. 12 hours, 25 minutes
Looking forward to seeing you at the book club.