Hello friends and neighbors!

Summer is a great time for reading! Did you know that Westport Island has its own “Little Free Library”? The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation, a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization established in 1987, has a mission to support educational, charitable and scientific endeavors in the community. As part of this mission, an enclosed receptacle of books is available to Island residents and visitors at 241 East Shore Road. It contains a selection of fiction and non-fiction titles, including many bestsellers. Anyone is welcome to take a book to enjoy and either return it or pass it along to someone else. Perhaps you have a book you would like to donate, as well. There is no fee to borrow books, and they will be available through October. What a wonderful opportunity!

As an avid reader, I am always looking for recommendations of good books. There are several titles I have recently encountered that you might want to check out.

I have almost finished an incredible novel written by a medical doctor about twin brothers born of a union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Published in 2009, “Cutting for Stone” by Abraham Verghese tells a sweeping family saga that moves from Ethiopia on the brink of revolution to New York City and back again.

The plot is intense and the characters are fully developed with both great virtues and serious flaws. The intriguing twists and turns illuminate the difficulty and hope that arise in family relationships against the backdrop of life and death medical decisions. The novel is hefty, but it is a book that is hard to put down. I am savoring it!

A recent excellent choice of my book club was J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” This New York Times bestseller may help shed light on the results of last year’s election. White working class Americans are the targeted culture in crisis, as this disintegrating demographic has experienced continual economic and social decline for several generations.

The author is a former marine and Yale law school graduate whose family grew up in a poor Rust Belt town. Mostly through luck and the lopsided guidance of his grandparents, J.D. managed to escape a legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty and trauma characteristic of that part of America. Yet Vance shows that he still carries around the demons of a chaotic history, and that there are no easy answers. Told with humor and vividly drawn characters, this non-fiction choice is a quick but compelling read.

Middle schoolers may enjoy the Young Readers’ Edition of “Orphan Train Girl.” Christina Kline Baker originally published Orphan Train several years ago as an adult novel which became a bestseller. A version of it has been adapted and condensed for younger readers, which was published this spring. I am using it with a young woman from Thailand whom I tutor, and we are both enjoying it. Books can teach both empathy and history, and this one does both. It is the story of a modern-day Penobscot foster child serendipitously learning about the life of an elderly woman who had to face her own harrowing challenges as an orphan at the turn of the last century.

Unbeknownst to me, from 1854 to 1929, before the age of foster care and welfare, an estimated 250,000 orphaned children were transported from East Coast urban areas to the rural Midwest on trains. Many of these children were first generation immigrants from Ireland, Poland, and Italy who experienced all manner of hardships out of their control. It is a little known but historically significant time in our nation’s history.

What are you reading this summer? Contact your newshound pat-dick@midcoast.com with your suggestions!