"The Long Blue Room, is a splendid powerful collection of poems. Gelfand invites us to see things that we usually overlook... Her mature poetry inspires chuckles (the Parisian returning home to kiss his wife after having just enjoyed a cassoulet and a crisp Sancerre) and will resonate with contemplative souls in her poetic Sangha. After reading William Saroyan years ago, I wanted to meet him, shake his hand and drink a beer with him. I feel the same way about Joan Gelfand." Joel Fallon, Poet Laureate of Benicia, CA (Emeritus)

The Long Blue Room

Literature & Fiction

Gelfand, Joan

Poetry

Benicia Literary Arts

June Oxford has covered the historical movement of California's capital, the political movements that affected decisions, as well as the story of the restoration of the Sacramento Capitol building. This book was produced by James Stevenson Publisher and sold from the third of California's state capitals in Benicia, which is now a state park, as well as the Sacramento State Capitol bookstore. This book is the complete book of California's Capitols.

The Capital That Couldn't Stay Put: The Complete Book of California's Capitols

Oxford, June

This young adult book portrays the Life of writer and poet, Stephen Vincent Benet. He lived from 1888 to 1943. During that time, he was well known especially for John Brown's Body and The Devil and Daniel Webster. He lived as a young child in Benicia, California, where his father was a military leader. The author lives in Benicia and has captured his time in that town and the home where the Benet family lived in the beginning of the story. His education, family, and his frail health, as well as his financial struggles throughout his life are all part of the story. A very patriotic person, Benet was unable to serve in the military because of his poor eyesight--he tried by memorizing the eye chart--but was caught and dismissed. In World War II, he wrote various articles for the war effort and was unwilling to take payment. When he did win a Pultizer Prize, it was in 1929. He invested it in the stock market, shortly before the crash. This carefully researched book recaptures the life and spirit of Benet, who is relatively unknown at this time.

With A Dream So Proud: The Life of Stephen Vincent Benet

Teen & Young Adult

Rubay, Donnell

Biographies

This Award-winning book recently earned acclaim from the prestigious Next Generation Indie Book Awards! Late Harvest Green is a finalist in two categories: General fiction/novel (under 80,000 words) and Ebook fiction.
I'll be signing copies of "Late Harvest Green" on Sunday, June 23, 2019 from 9 to 11 am, at Headline Books at the American Libraries Association Conference and Exhibition. The book will be available starting Friday at Headline Books.
Late Harvest Green is the quiet, heartfelt story of life in a small town in Idaho over several generations of a farm family. It is an American story, a tale of open spaces, of men and women as rooted in the land, and as nourished by it, as the crops they grow. But war reaches them, and changes come, even in in their peaceful valley.
 There is a deep love of history here, a love of life, and a profound compassion for the human condition. The past informs the present: what people remember, what they forget and forgive, how experience forms them. At the center of the book is the mystery of connection--how people form attachments, and how fragile these become in the face of loss or trauma, how some people thrive despite great loss, while others crumble under it. The characters are deeply and finely wrought. I felt as if I knew them as real people.
 Like Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Late Harvest Green conjures up a unique time and place. The unchanging mountains, the taste of a ripe peach, the scent and heft of the soil--all act as talismans to draw us deep into a vanished world whose riches are fleeting, and very real.

Late Harvest Green: An Idaho Farm Family Through the 20th Century

Requist, Lois

Parenting & Relationships

The 50s and 60s come alive in this episodic memoir set in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The drug culture, the Vietnam War, and the music of the time provide a vivid context for the story of a family united by love but torn apart by an unspoken secret. At the book's center lies the deep bond between Glenn and his sister, Carolyn, who uses multiple points of view to tell the tragic story of her brother's brief life with insight, understanding, and wry humor.\n"Who can explain the secrets held by members of a family in knowing silence?" asks Carolyn Plath in the preface to her heartbreaking yet sassy memoir, "Glenn's Sister." From the opening pages, it's clear why that job has fallen to her. Before she turned 25, Carolyn was the only one of the family left standing. Decades later she was still lugging around her dysfunctional family's history, trying to make sense of how and why so many things went wrong for her beloved older brother, with whom she shared a connection she felt in the marrow of her bones. She had a lot of unpacking to do.

Glenn's Sister

Plath, Carolyn

Unsettled

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