Here are 2 books that Down the Wild Cape Fear fans have personally recommended if you like Down the Wild Cape Fear. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of These Truths: A History of the United States

Marcia E. Herman-Giddens Author Of Unloose My Heart: A Personal Reckoning with the Twisted Roots of My Southern Family Tree

From Marcia's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Marcia's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Marcia E. Herman-Giddens Why Marcia loves this book

This vital book was published in 2018 and I hadn't taken time to read it until this year. We need these truths about our country more than ever now. Deeply researched and written as only Jill Lepore can do, it will teach you things you never knew and reteach you what you thought you knew. We are a people with a history of grievous sins as well as momentous discoveries and joys.

By Jill Lepore ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked These Truths as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The American experiment rests on three ideas-"these truths", Jefferson called them-political equality, natural rights and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, "on a dedication to inquiry, fearless and unflinching", writes Jill Lepore in a ground-breaking investigation into the American past that places truth at the centre of the nation's history.

Telling the story of America, beginning in 1492, These Truths asks whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them. Finding meaning in contradiction, Lepore weaves American history into a tapestry of faith and hope, of peril and prosperity, of technological progress…


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Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

Sally Dukes Author Of Drummer Girl

From my list on pilgrimages of the soul.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love stories about “pilgrimage.” I have always been an admirer of those characters who search, whether in fiction or nonfiction. I respect their steadfast endurance to undertake a calling, meet unforeseen obstacles, and overcome insurmountable circumstances, while never allowing the burning flame that drives them to extinguish. 

My own memoir, Drummer Girl, is the story of my pilgrimage. I have the distinct memory of traveling through a dark tunnel toward a clear light during surgery as a child. This experience of near death has since driven me to seek understanding, to look for words when there were none, and to find solace through life’s many turns.

Sally's book list on pilgrimages of the soul

Sally Dukes Why Sally loves this book

Always curious about those who experience near-death, I recently read In My Time of Dying.

Besides my self-interest in Junger’s actual experience, I found his curiosity and relentless determination to understand his experience, his idea of an afterlife, a pilgrimage into the metaphysical unknown. Mastering the medical knowledge of his vascular failure, Junger remains at a loss to intellectually grasp a cognitive understanding of his near-death experience.

At one point, an attending nurse said, “Instead of thinking of it as something scary, try thinking of it as something sacred.” It is Junger’s honest inquiry into the sacred and his weaving of questions with no clear answers that make this autobiography a humbling and insightful read. 

By Sebastian Junger ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked In My Time of Dying as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.

For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger traveled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was…


Book cover of These Truths: A History of the United States
Book cover of In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife

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