Jeanette Lynes recommends
Roar (2023)
Shelley Thompson
"Fire and ash, breath, spirit and mist, forest, river and sea, earth wafting sweet scents of peony, honeysuckle. Shelley Thompson's Roar is a beautiful, deeply immersive story of a family's resilience through loss and their work of healing, and rebuilding, as we follow Don's journey to becoming Dawn and, as her name suggests, a new beginning. A story of thresholds, transformations, and the power of love, Roar is also a story about community; Thompson resists romanticizing it, doesn't shy away from exposing its underbelly -- but she also reveals its capacity for acceptance and change. We've always needed this story but now we need it more than ever."
The Virgins of Venice (2022)
Gina Buonaguro
"A gripping, textured, meticulously researched tale of women's lives in the watery world of early sixteenth-century Venice, a place of beauty but also rigid social stratification. . . . We encounter a vivid array of women from various walks of life who struggle for survival, agency, and love, and who often risk everything to break out of society's constraints and expectations that define them. Compelling, heart-wrenching. Unputdownable."
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