For Readers: Blog

Close to home: books of the Midwest

Begin an adventure from your armchair with these engrossing books that will transport your mind to nearby states. The Midwest consists of 12 states in the north central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. For our purposes we are going to stay close to home and visit the states that are nearest to Illinois. Here is a mix of fictional settings as well as non-fiction to start your tour. 

Illinois

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes, Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. [print | audiobook]

Brothers Emanuel by Ezekiel J. Emanuel
A portrait of the dynamic Emanuel family cites their achievements in medicine, politics, and Hollywood and offers insight into the family history, unique upbringing, and social atmosphere that influenced their lives. [print]

Wisconsin

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
A remarkable and uncompromising saga that explores the age-old question of whether or not you can ever truly come home again—and the kind of steely faith and love returning requires. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Evicted by Matthew Desmond
A sociologist examines the under-represented challenge of eviction as a formidable cause of poverty in America, using Milwaukee as an example, revealing how millions of people are wrongly forced from their homes and reduced to cycles of extreme disadvantage that are reinforced by dysfunctional legal systems. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Iowa

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
An Iowa farmer who has worked a thousand acre plot owned by his family for generations abruptly decides to leave his farm to his three daughters and retire. His two eldest daughters are pleased with the decision but his youngest daughter has been cut out by her father and is angry. As the daughters' activity on the land progresses, they notice a change in their father. Events begin to unfold that will threaten to destroy the family and their farm. [print | audiobook]

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
The author describes his all-American childhood growing up as a member of the baby boom generation in the heart of Iowa, detailing his rich fantasy life as a superhero known as the Thunderbolt Kid and his remarkably normal 1950s family life. [e-book | print | audiobook]

Missouri

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
When beautiful Amy Dunne disappears from her Missouri home, it looks as if her husband Nick is to blame. But though he protests his innocence, it's clear that he's not being entirely truthful. [e-book | print | audiobook | large type]

Bettyville by George Hodgman
A veteran magazine and book editor returns to his hometown of Paris, Missouri, to take care of his aging mother, Betty, a strong-willed woman who speaks her mind and has never really accepted the fact that her son is gay. [print]

Indiana

Opioid, Indiana by Brian Allen Carr
A recently orphaned teen in rural Indiana finds himself suspended from school and searching for both a job and his drug-addled uncle, now his legal guardian, to get the rent paid in five days. [print | audiobook]

Soldier Girls by Helen Thorpe
The absorbing story of how wartime experiences shaped the lives and friendships of three female soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Michelle Fischer, Debbie Helton and Desma Brooks are three Indiana women who had very different reasons for joining the National Guard. [print]

And everything else

The Midwest Survival Guide by Charlie Berens
Everything you need to know about the great states of the Midwest. [print]

Midwest Pie edited by Meredith Pangrace
A historical tour of midwestern pies that recalls when recipes were shared through faded note cards and junior league cookbooks. [print]

⏤Lillian