Park Hill Community Bookstore suggests books to inform and challenge

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Park Hill Community Bookstore in Denver recommends a Colorado history-based novel, 17th-century historical fiction and an examination of melancholy. Note: All titles subject to availability.

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From the publisher: Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado — the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses.

Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, “Go as a River” is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home — where least expected. This stunning debut explores what it means to lead your life as if it were a river — gathering and flowing, finding a way forward even when a river is dammed.

From Babette McQueen, volunteer: If you’re reading this review, chances are you’re in Colorado. If you’re in Colorado, chances are this book is a must-read for you. An astonishing debut novel by one of our very own, 12 years in the making, Shelley Read puts her heart, soul, knowledge and love of all things Colorado into this beautifully crafted story.  

This book doesn’t just highlight a story that needs to be told about the towns lost to the creation of Blue Mesa Reservoir. It’s also a rich narrative of love and loss and family ties and what place means. It’s about finding strength and resilience when it doesn’t seem possible to go on. It’s about difficult decisions and the consequences they bring. 

This complex and delicate debut novel by a fifth generation Coloradoan creates a cast of real and unforgettable characters. It paints a landscape that makes your heart ache for Colorado’s Western Slope and all that life offers there. For the birds and the mountains and the sunsets and the seasons and its people.

And it absolutely makes you want to eat a Nash peach. 

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From the publisher: Set in London of the 1660s and of the early 21st century, “The Weight of Ink” is the interwoven tale of two women of remarkable intellect: Ester Velasquez, an emigrant from Amsterdam who is permitted to scribe for a blind rabbi, just before the plague hits the city; and Helen Watt, an ailing historian with a love of Jewish history.

Electrifying and ambitious, sweeping in scope and intimate in tone, “The Weight of Ink” is a sophisticated work of historical fiction about women separated by centuries, and the choices and sacrifices they must make in order to reconcile the life of the heart and mind.

From Babette McQueen, volunteer: I want to recommend this book to you, but I am hesitant. At 592 pages, interweaving a complex storyline spanning centuries, it is a long read that requires commitment to finish. But if you are up for the challenge, it is worth the investment. 

As winner of the National Jewish Book Award in 2017, this book takes us on a journey with a peek into a time and a world that we don’t often encounter. And although published in 2017, it is so timely for today! Having just endured the recent pandemic ourselves, it was fascinating to read about the bubonic plague of 1665-66 and explore the comparisons and contrasts to our own recent experience. And of course, the Jewish theme is as relevant today as any day.

Most good books feature both rich character development and captivating plot, and this certainly offers both. But its crowning achievement is its presentation of two vastly different, but equally engaging, strong female protagonists. I didn’t foresee the clever twists at the end, but maybe you will.

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From the publisher: Business consultant Cain (“Quiet”) returns with an eye-opening take on the underestimated virtues of melancholy. She suggests that bittersweetness — “a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world” — affords the opportunity to channel “pain into creativity, transcendence, and love,” as exemplified by musicians and other artists. 

Cain handily traverses fields as diverse as neuroscience, popular music, religion, and business management to find instances of the transformation of pain and longing into fulfillment: the music of Leonard Cohen, for example, is “a transcendence delivery system,” and in Michigan, a hospital billing department’s culture of caring for distressed or bereaved employees resulted in collecting bills faster. Though Cain’s panoramic scope covers some familiar ground (U.S. culture’s “tyranny of positivity” has been critiqued before), this ambitious work impresses in its dexterous integration of disparate thought traditions into a cohesive, moving, and insightful whole. Like a more intuitive Malcolm Gladwell, Cain delivers a deeply felt study of the profound uses of sorrow and melancholy, a perfect manual for coping with tough times.

From Babette McQueen, volunteer: The fact that I’m recommending this book at all speaks for its power and thoughtfulness. It’s written by an introvert about melancholy and I’m neither an introvert nor do I like melancholy. In fact, my friends call me the extrovert’s extrovert and I don’t even love beautiful Colorado fall because to me it feels so melancholic. I avoid sadness at all costs.

The first time I picked up “Quiet,” her previous book, I felt my extroversion was being attacked and I quickly discarded the book. Later, I gave it a second chance with a more open mind and saw the value and the wisdom. This book further develops the themes of introversion, quietness, and thoughtfulness, and opens up a world rich with meaning and depth and insight. Whether you espouse a rich, deep, inner life, or live more on the surface of optimism and positive thinking, this book can expand your horizons and help you to consider new perspectives. 

I recommend this book to anyone who reads…anything. It is a thoughtful, well-researched, and well-written offering to expose you to the underside of life, no matter where you sit on the introvert-extrovert continuum.