About Stubborn Twig

Fiction Books (if you liked Stubborn Twig...)

Oregon Reads 2009

Alexie, Sherman The Toughest Indian in the World
This acclaimed collection of stories presents the kind of native American rarely seen in literature — one portrayed without stereotypes — who pays his bills, holds down jobs, and falls in and out of love.

Chacón, Daniel And the Shadows Took Him
The Molinas, a Mexican American family, are living their version of the American dream in a Fresno barrio. When William gets a better job, it's the family's chance to enter the ranks of the middle class, and he announces that they're off to try their chances in Oregon.

Dillard, Annie The Living
The extravagantly praised, nationally bestselling first novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dillard — a mesmerizing evocation of life in the Pacific Northwest during the last decades of the 19th century. "A novel of character that blends history, social change, and individual dreams in a sophisticated, seamless prose". —Seattle Times.

Doig, Ivan The Sea Runners
Four men, indentured Scandinavians, escape Russian Alaska and make their way down the Pacific Northwest coast in a stolen canoe.

Eidson, Tom All God's Children
A widowed Quaker woman struggles to raise her sons and keep her land on the frontier. When she befriends and takes in a Japanese-American family, trouble with her neighbors arises.

Fowler, Karen Joy Sarah Canary
Into a Chinese laborer's camp in the unsettled Northwest Pacific wanders a strange white woman dressed in black, speaking a garbled but ecstatic language. When a young Cantonese boy is chosen to escort her back to whatever unknown place she came from, they both embark on what proves to be an extraordinary odyssey.

Hamamura, John The Color of the Sea
Separated from his Japanese-American family and girlfriend by the internment practices of World War II, martial arts master Sam Hamada is recruited by the U.S. Army for a secret mission in Japan, where he finds himself torn between cultures.

Hockenberry, John A River Out of Eden
When several government employees are found murdered along the Columbia River, Francine Smohalla, a government worker of Chinook and white descent, embarks on an investigation and soon finds herself caught between her tribe and a local extremist.

Ikeda, David Stewart What the Scarecrow Said
Prosperous William Fujita, a Japanese American born as soon as his mother arrives on the mainland in 1897, must go with his family and other Japanese to the internment camps in 1942.

Kadohata, Cynthia The Floating World
Story of a Japanese-American girl and her family travelling around the Pacific Northwest during the 1950's.

Kogawa, Joy Obasan
Pearl Harbor changes life in Vancouver for Naomi Nakane when the government takes property from her relatives and interns them.

Larson, Elsie J. The Dawn’s Early Light
Also known as: Tides of War; bk. 1
A woman whose husband was killed at Pearl Harbor must face her prejudice when she is asked to spy on interned Japanese-Americans, but becomes sympathetic to their plight.

Mitchell, Kirk Black Dragon
During World War II, Jared Campbell, a civilian homicide detective stationed at Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp in California, joins forces with Hank Fukuda, the camp's internal police chief, to investigate the decapitation murder of the camp director and the suicide of an internee.

Malladi, Amulya Serving Crazy with Curry
Pressured by her mother to marry and become a traditional Indian wife and confronted by the loss of her job in Silicon Valley, Devi seeks refuge from her despair in attempted suicide, only to be forced to move back in with her parents until she recovers.

Mueller, Marnie The Climate of the Country
The stories of the Japanese Americans interred at the Tule Lake Relocation Center during the second World War are told by Denton Jordan, a conscientious objector who both lives and works in the camp.

Okada, John No-No Boy
Ichiro, a Japanese-American, returns to Seattle, Washington after spending two years in an internment camp, and another two years in prison.

Otsuka, Julie When the Emperor Was Divine
Told from five different points of view, this story chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

Robinson, Eden Monkey Beach
Five hundred miles north of Vancouver is Kitamaat, an Indian reservation in the homeland of the Haisla people. When the mischievous 20-year-old Lisa Hill begins receiving visits from otherworldly guests, readers discover that this small community is alive with more than its colorful citizens.

Sakamoto, Kerri The Electrical Field
When a lonely, middle-aged Japanese-Canadian women is implicated in the murder of a beautiful young girl in a small Ontario suburb, the whole community is forced to come to terms with its dark past.

Siporin, Alan Fire’s Edge
From award-winning writer and former NPR reporter Alan Siporin, comes a riveting novel of suspense and courage, where people, good and bad, are tested by hate in Oregon’s skinhead underworld.

Tatlock, Ann All the Way Home
From an abusive German-Irish family, Augusta informally adopts Sunny Yamagata's family as her own until the Yamagatas are sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in the 1940s. They meet again in Mississippi twenty years later.

Uyemoto, Holly Go
Wilhelmina deals with emotional problems and her Japanese-American family's history on the eve of her 21st birthday.

Veltfort, Ruhama The Promised Land
The renegade son of an orthodox rabbi in the shetls of Poland flees to the New World and settles into the mercantile splendor of golden-age St. Louis, where he is driven by recurring visions to lead his followers West on the Oregon Trail.

Weatherford, Joyce Heart of the Beast
In an attempt to save her family farm, Iris Steele explores generations of family history and lore, piecing together the story of her family's past, and the events that fostered fear and distrust between early homesteaders and Native Americans, and is still felt by their descendants today.

Wheeler, Richard S. The Fields of Eden
In the mid 1840s, the trails from the Missouri frontier are clogged with pioneers searching for a new life in a remote land they call a “new Eden.” This is the story of the emigrants who go up against the British Hudson's Bay Company to overcome their shattered dreams and make possible the settlement of Old Oregon