Skip to content

Lists and Suggestions

Home » Books, Movies, & More » Lists and Suggestions

http://mppldev.org/books-movies-more/lists-and-suggestions/?category=books&list=One+Book%2C+One+Village%3A+Grief%2C+Hope%2C+and+Healing

List: One Book, One Village: Grief, Hope, and Healing


A photo of The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I'll take excellent care of it." Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he'd return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there's nobody left in Fred's life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he's desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. Fred's luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has a roof over his head, three meals a day, and, most importantly, the chance to be part of a family again. All he has to do is hope that his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up. As Fred navigates life in Bernard's shoes, he learns about the man's past and what it might take to return a life in better condition than he found it. Bittersweet and remarkably perceptive, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a feel-good, clever novel about grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family, from an exciting new voice in fiction.

More

Checking status…

A photo of The Great Believers

The Great Believers

In 1985, Yale Tishman is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery where he works. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying, and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel

Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel

Tilly was a bright, outgoing little girl who liked playing with ghosts and matches. She loved fizzy drinks, swear words, fish fingers and Catholic churches, but most of all she loved living in Brighton in Queenie Malone's magnificent Paradise Hotel with its endearing and loving family of misfits--staff and guests alike. But Tilly's childhood was shattered when her mother sent her away from the only home she'd ever loved to boarding school with little explanation and no warning. Now, Tilda has grown into an independent woman still damaged by her mother's unaccountable cruelty. Wary of people, her only friend is her dog, Eli. But when her mother dies, Tilda goes back to Brighton, and with the help of her beloved Queenie sets about unravelling the mystery of her exile from The Paradise Hotel, only to discover that her mother was not the woman she thought she knew at all.

More

Checking status…

A photo of The Guncle

The Guncle

Patrick O'Hara is a bit out of his league. Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for week-long visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. So when tragedy strikes and Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian, he is, honestly, overwhelmed. Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled acting career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine- year old. But when his waggish set of "Guncle Rules" no longer appease Maisie and Grant's parental void, Patrick's eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you're unfailingly human.

More

Checking status…

A photo of When All Is Said

When All Is Said

If you had to pick five people to sum up your life, who would they be? If you were to raise a glass to each of them, what would you say? And what would you learn about yourself, when all is said? At the bar of a grand hotel in a small Irish town sits 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. He's alone, as usual, though tonight is anything but. Pull up a stool and charge your glass, because Maurice is finally ready to tell his story. Over the course of this evening, he will raise five toasts to the five people who have meant the most to him.

More

Checking status…

A photo of The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club

The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club

Two sisters living on Martha's Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women--a spectacular novel inspired by true events from the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls.

Checking status…

A photo of Ordinary Grace

Ordinary Grace

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

Checking status…

A photo of The Story of Arthur Truluv

The Story of Arthur Truluv

Arthur, a widower, meets Maddy, an angry and friendless teenage girl, while visiting his late wife at the cemetery, where he goes every day for lunch. Against all odds, the two strike up a friendship that pulls them out of a serious rut. They band together with Arthur's nosy neighbor Lucille, to create lives that are truly worth living. Proving that life's most precious moments are sweeter when shared, they go from strangers, to friends, to an untraditional but loving family.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Bear Necessity

Bear Necessity

Danny's life is falling apart. He's become a single father to eleven-year-old Will--who hasn't spoken since the death of his mother in a car crash a year earlier--and Danny has just been fired from his construction job. To make matters worse, he's behind on the rent and his nasty landlord is threatening to break his legs if he doesn't pay soon. Danny needs money, and fast. After observing local street performers in a nearby park, Danny spends his last few dollars on a tattered panda costume, impulsively deciding to become a dancing bear.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Benediction

Benediction

A terminally ill cancer patient is attended throughout his final days by his wife and daughter while the trio contemplates their relationships with an estranged son, a situation that stirs up painful memories for a new next-door neighbor who has recently lost her mother.

Checking status…

A photo of Good Dirt

Good Dirt

The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick.

Checking status…

A photo of A Quiet Life

A Quiet Life

Chuck Ayers used to look forward to nothing so much as his annual trip to Hilton Head with his wife, Cat--that yearly taste of relaxation they'd become accustomed to in retirement, after a lifetime of working and raising two children. Now, just months after Cat's death, Chuck finds that he can't let go of her things--her favorite towel, the sketchbooks in her desk drawer--as he struggles to pack for a trip he can't imagine taking without her. Ella Burke delivers morning newspapers and works at a bridal shop to fill her days while she anxiously awaits news--any piece of information--about her missing daughter. Ella adjusts to life in a new apartment and answers every call on her phone, hoping her daughter will reach out one day. After the sudden death of her father, Kirsten Bonato set aside her veterinary school aspirations, finding comfort in the steady routine of working at an animal shelter. But as time passes, old dreams and new romantic interests begin to surface--and Kirsten finds herself at another crossroads.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Intermezzo

Intermezzo

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties--successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father's death, he's medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women--his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude--a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Dear Edward

Dear Edward

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor. Edward's story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. But then he makes an unexpected discovery--one that will lead him to the answers of some of life's most profound questions.

More

Checking status…

A photo of My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

From the author of the internationally bestselling A Man Called Ove, a charming, warmhearted novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother's fairy tales.

Checking status…

A photo of What We Owe

What We Owe

Nahid has six months left to live. Or so the doctors say. At fifty, she is no stranger to loss. But now, as she stands on the precipice of her own death--just as she has learned that her daughter, Aram, is pregnant with her first child--Nahid is filled with both new fury and long-dormant rage. Her life back home in Iran, and living as a refugee in Sweden, has been about survival at any cost. How to actually live, she doesn't know; she has never had the ability or opportunity to learn.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic

Fun Home : A Family Tragicomic

A darkly funny memoir of Alison Bechdel's family, including her coming out of the closet, and the revelation that her father was also gay.

Checking status…

A photo of Tell the Wolves I'm Home

Tell the Wolves I'm Home

It is 1987, and only one person has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus--her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn's company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June's world is turned upside down. But Finn's death brings a surprise acquaintance into June's life--someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Everything I Never Told You

Everything I Never Told You

Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. A story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

More

Checking status…

A photo of It's Not All Downhill From Here

It's Not All Downhill From Here

On the eve of her sixty-eighth birthday, Loretha Curry has a booming beauty supply empire, a gaggle of lifelong friends, and a husband who's still got moves that surprise. True, she's carrying a few more pounds than she should be, but she's not one of those women who thinks her best days are behind her, and she's determined to prove her mother, her twin sister, and everyone else with that outdated view of aging wrong--it's not all downhill from here. But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha will have to summon all her strength, resourcefulness, and determination to keep on thriving, pursue joy, heal old wounds, and chart new paths. With a little help from her friends, of course.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Transcendent Kingdom

Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's losses, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

More

Checking status…

A photo of We Are Okay

We Are Okay

After picking up and leaving everything behind in California, eighteen-year-old Marin, with the help of her former friend, must confront her grief and the truths that caused her to flee her home.

Checking status…

A photo of LaRose

LaRose

North Dakota, late summer, 1999. Landreaux Iron stalks a deer along the edge of the property bordering his own. He shoots with easy confidence - but when the buck springs away, Landreaux realizes he's hit something else, a blur he saw as he squeezed the trigger. When he staggers closer, he realizes he has killed his neighbor's five-year-old son, Dusty Ravich. The youngest child of his friend and neighbor, Peter Ravich, Dusty was best friends with Landreaux's five-year-old son, LaRose. The two families have always been close, sharing food, clothing, and rides into town; their children played together despite going to different schools; and Landreaux's wife, Emmaline, is half sister to Dusty's mother, Nola. Horrified at what he's done, the recovered alcoholic turns to an Ojibwe tribe tradition - the sweat lodge - for guidance, and finds a way forward. Following an ancient means of retribution, he and Emmaline will give LaRose to the grieving Peter and Nola. "Our son will be your son now, " they tell them.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Hamnet

Hamnet

England, 1580. A young Latin tutor-- penniless, bullied by a violent father-- falls in love with an eccentric young woman who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford. She becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast force in the life of her young husband, whose gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their young son succumbs to bubonic plague.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son's body.

More

Checking status…

A photo of The Push

The Push

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting, supportive mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--Violet rejects her mother, screams uncontrollably, and becomes a disturbing, disruptive presence at her preschool. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. Then their son Sam is born--and with him, Blythe has the natural, blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Signal Fires

Signal Fires

Late on a summer night in 1985, three teenagers are in a tragic car crash on the quiet, suburban Division Avenue. A girl is killed, and Theo and Sarah Wilf are left with a devastating secret that will haunt their family forever. By the time the Shenkmans move in across the street, the accident has faded into the past, but secrets haunt both families and cause them to become intimately intertwined. When Waldo Shenkman, a brilliant but lonely child, befriends Ben Wilf, who is struggling with his wife's decline from Alzheimer's, he once again entangles the families' fates and sets in motion the spellbinding, unforgettable climax.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Family Lore

Family Lore

Sisters Matilde, Pastora, Camila, and Flor thought they knew each other well, until Flor--inspired by a documentary her daughter Ona made her watch--decides she wants a living wake, a party to bring her family and community together and celebrate the long life she's led, while she's still around to enjoy it. She's not ill, as far as anybody knows, but Flor does have a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. Has she foreseen her own death, or someone else's, or does she have other motives? She refuses to say. But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she now must confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to attempt to solve her sibling's problems. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi, reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; and Ona, married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying-in having a child, and in the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster.

More

Checking status…

A photo of After Annie

After Annie

When Annie Brown, a fun-loving woman, suddenly dies, her husband, best friend, and her children all struggle to find ways to go on after the loss of the woman who was the center of their lives, and who made life happy, fun, and secure. Her husband is overwhelmed with four children to raise, and turns to his teenage daughter for help, and to an old girlfriend for solace. Annie's best friend struggles again with opioid addiction, having depended on Annie for support through addiction and recovery. Annie's daughter discovers disturbing truths about life in a small town, including at her new best friend's house, where she stumbles upon a dangerous secret. These and other characters reconfigure their lives and learn how to go on, after Annie.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Blue Sisters

Blue Sisters

The three Blue sisters are exceptional--and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in. But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.

More

Checking status…

A photo of Afterlife

Afterlife

Antonia Vega has just retired from the college where she taught English when her beloved husband, Sam, suddenly dies. And then more jolts: her bighearted but unstable sister disappears, and Antonia returns home one evening to find a pregnant, undocumented teenager on her doorstep. Antonia has always sought direction in the literature she loves, but now she finds that the world demands more of her than words. Now she questions: How do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves?

More

Checking status…

© Copyright 2025 Mount Prospect Public Library,
All Rights Reserved

Mount Prospect Public Library

Install Mount Prospect Public Library

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap then “Add to Home Screen”