The Bookies Bookstore suggests fictional tales of friendship, family

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 The Bookies Bookstore in Denver recommends a kid’s summer adventure, a winding tale of friendship and a generational family history.

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From the publisher: Finn Connelly is nothing like his dad, a star athlete and firefighter hero who always ran toward danger until he died two years ago. Finn is about to fail seventh grade and has never made headlines . . . until now.

Caught on camera vandalizing a cemetery, he’s in big trouble for knocking down some dead old lady’s headstone. Turns out that grave belongs to a legendary local mountain climber, and her daughter makes Finn an unusual offer: She’ll drop all the charges if he agrees to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks in a single summer. And there’s just one more thing—he has to bring along the dead woman’s dog.

In a wild three months of misadventures, mountain mud, and unexpected mentors, Finn begins to find his way on the trails. At the top of each peak, he can see for miles and slowly begins to understand more about himself and his dad. But the mountains don’t care about any of that, and as the clock ticks down to September, they have more surprises in store. Finn’s final summit challenge may be more than even a hero can face.

From Marilyn Robbins, children’s book buyer and programs manager: Before you start “The Trouble with Heroes,” be sure you have cleared your calendar for the day, because once you start, you won’t be able to put the book down. And when you finish, you’ll find yourself crying, cheering, and clutching the book to your heart, not wanting to let go. Messner has written her masterpiece. Read this book, and then read it again. This is a journey you need to take.

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From the publisher: It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s “The Wedding People” is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

From Bess Maher, event liaison: This was another book that was on all my friends’ best-books-of-the-year lists and I’m so glad I picked it up. From the first pages I was all in, completely there with Phoebe and Lila. Is it a love story? Yes, but more than that, it’s a story about finding friends in the most unlikely places and the magic friends, new and old, can bring to our lives.

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From the publisher: When 10-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby’s high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that’s exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what’s happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day 18 years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought north by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family’s history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

From Susan Loftus, bookseller: “Good Dirt” is a multigenerational story about an African American family and how they deal with their family’s history and more recent tragedy. Fantastic follow-up from the author of “Black Cake”!

Type of Story: Review

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