The Brown Bag Book Discussion Group – March & April Update

The BBB selection for March is Killers of the Osage Moon: The Osage murders and the Birth of the FBI (nonfiction) by David Grann.

“In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world
were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off … under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered … The newly created FBI took up the case, and young … J. Edgar Hoover, turned to … former Texas Ranger … Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White’s … undercover team, included a Native American agent … and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.” (Amazon Books). Please join us on March 6 at noon in the Fireside Room to discuss this important part of our history.

The April book selection is Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (fiction).

“In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant and that her lover is married – she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters – strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis – survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.” (Amazon) Please join us on April 2 at noon in the Fire- side Room to discuss this NYT bestseller and National Book Award finalist.