Healing through Books
Healing Place of the Soul
-Inscription over the door to the library of the ancient city of Thebes
A book is a refuge, a guide, a source of inspiration, a friend. Share a favorite book with Healing Hamlet.
The House on Mango Street
Sandra Cisneros The story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza’s thoughts and emotions are expressed in her fable-like poems and stories, which portray the alternating beauty and desolation of her life and its realities. Esperanza doesn’t want to belong—not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to …
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “People where you live,” the little prince said, “grow five thousand roses in one garden… yet they don’t find what they’re looking for…” “They don’t find it,” I answered. “And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water…” “Of course,” I answered. And the …
The Healing
Jonathan Odell Plantation mistress Amanda Satterfield’s intense grief over losing her daughter crosses the line into madness when she takes a newborn slave child as her own and names her Granada. Troubled by his wife’s disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague that is sweeping through the plantation’s slave quarters, Master Satterfield purchases Polly Shine, a slave woman known as …
Old Pig
Margaret Wild Illustrations by Ron Brooks “Now,” said Old Pig, “I want to feast.”… “Look!” said Old Pig. “Do you see how the light glitters on the leaves?” “Look!” said Old Pig. “Do you see the clouds gather like gossips in the sky?” “Look!” said Old Pig. “Do you see how the trees …
Forge
Laurie Halse Anderson An escaped slave enlists as a soldier and struggles with his regiment to survive the bitter cold winter of 1777-78 in Valley Forge. Still a teen, Curzon must endure days without food, disentegrating boots, disrespect and mistreatment by his fellow soldiers. He is fighting for the freedom of people who will not recognize his …
Abide With Me
Elizabeth Strout In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. At the same time, the community he has served so charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings–faith and hypocrisy, …
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston’s beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring Southern love story sparkling with wit, beauty, and heartfelt wisdom. Told in the captivating voice of a woman who refuses to live in sorrow, bitterness, fear, or foolish …
The Big Burn
Timothy Egan Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, and Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as …