Looking for books with strong women characters? Here is a short list of books by women about women with strength, character, and even delusional courage. Books that inspire with the truth of women’s experience. Something for any book club or a gift for any friend, man or woman. Books by NLAPW members are marked with a (PW). Feel free to add your own recommendations!!
The Light Between Oceans
ML Stedman
Set in Australia in the 1920s. Reminiscent of J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country with a woman protagonist in addition to WWI veteran.
The Trial of Misella Cross
Catherine Witek (PW)
Set in 18th century England, about a prostitute on trial for murder, this time told with a woman’s voice.
Mother Tongue
Demetria Martinez
A young woman smuggles refugees from El Salvador’s bloody civil war.
Chased by Demons
Jacqueline Grossman (PW)
A memoir of coming of age under Nazi occupation of Paris.
The Optimist’s Daughter
Eudora Welty (PW)
Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the South. If you haven’t read this yet, you owe yourself a treat.
Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali
Kris Holloway; Consulting Editor John Bidwell
Must read on women’s lives in remote West Africa.
Please add your own recommendations to this list.
and a poem:
Destinations
By Dorothy Atkins
Santa Clara County Branch
Moving into darkness
Where are they all going?
Only headlights making a trail
Trusting the feel of the road a lone jogger.
Faceless drivers following the moon
Destinations unknown
Hands gripping the wheel
Safe inside, autopilot
Stillness sounds.
Pull off, pull in, and park
Where are they all going?
Faceless people hurried
Eyes straight ahead
Rush rush hurry rush.
Escalator to descend and propel
No time, run the stairs, push aside
To a space rush
Catch another moving.
Faceless people eyes straight ahead
Going into darkness
Where are they all going?
Arrive
Eyes straight ahead
Destinations unknown.
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Talk about strong women! Dorothy Atkins, poet, took on our Santa Clara County branch of NLAPW and has been an outstanding president for these past four years. Dorothy shows her art at Gallery Saratoga in that city, and it, too, is strong. She doesn’t claim to be a poet; obviously, she is. Thank you, whoever chose her poem to add to the list.