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Why read it?

1 author picked Sorrowland as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

It begins with Vern, a Black, Albino teen escaping from Cainland, the cult compound she’s raised in, and giving birth (to twins!) alone in the woods. A refuge for Black American activists in the 1950s, Cainland became a religious stronghold controlled by Reverend Sherman, Vern’s much older husband.

Vern begins to question the anti-queer propaganda, the oppression of girls and women and unearths treachery beneath the compound’s revolutionary surface. Plus her body is changing, growing stronger, monstrous, becoming something altogether new. Hauntings—full-scale hallucinations, or so she thinks—chip away at her sanity and sense of self. Vern is all fight, but…

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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