Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...
Author
Language
English
Description
Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber, as a word, was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound, but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it; especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer. Late in the afternoon the sun slanted down into the mossy yard belonging to Francie Nolan's house,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their tumultuous family lives and declining town -- broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle-school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them,...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale. Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family's Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge--until strangers arrive...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The year is 1883, and in New York City, it's a time of dizzying splendor, crushing poverty, and tremendous change. With the gravity-defying Brooklyn Bridge nearly complete and New York in the grips of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock, Anna Savard and her cousin Sophie -- both graduates of the Woman's Medical School -- treat the city's most vulnerable, even if doing so may put everything they've strived for in jeopardy. Anna's work has placed her...
Author
Language
English
Description
Annawadi is a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as India starts to prosper, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective and enterprising Muslim teenager, sees "a fortune beyond counting" in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, has identified an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption....
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Opal is a lot of things--orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier--but above all, she's a determined to find a better life for her younger brother Jasper. One that gets them out of Eden, Kentucky, a town remarkable for only two things: 1) a surprising amount of unexplained bad luck and natural disasters 2) the only known sightings of E. (Eleanor) Starling, a reclusive nineteenth-century author whose only published book,...
9) Ethan Frome
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
With this intensely moving short novel, Edith Wharton set out 'to draw life as it really was' in the lonely villages and desolate farms of the harsh New England mountains. Through the eyes of a visitor from the city, trapped for a winter in snowbound Starkfield, readers glimpse the hidden histories of this austere and beautiful land. Piecing together the story of monosyllabic Ethan Frome, his grim wife, Zeena, and Mattie Silver, her charming cousin,...
10) Ghostbread
Author
Publisher
University of Georgia Press
Language
English
Formats
Description
A memoir of growing up poor and hungry in 1970s western New York: “Like an American version of Angela’s Ashes.”—Kathleen Norris, New York Times-bestselling author of The Cloister Walk
When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through.
One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western...
When you eat soup every night, thoughts of bread get you through.
One of seven children brought up by a single mother, Sonja Livingston was raised in areas of western...
11) Poor people
Author
Publisher
Ecco
Pub. Date
c2007
Language
English
Description
"Because I was bad in my last life." "Because Allah has willed it." "Because the rich do nothing for the poor." "Because the poor do nothing for themselves." "Because it is my destiny." These are just some of the answers to the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asks in cities and villages around the globe: "Why are you poor?" In the tradition of James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, writer Vollmann struggles to confront poverty...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.
13) Dead ringer
Publisher
Gravitas Ventures
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
A modern day, The Prince And The Pauper, a poor man ends up taking over another man's life from the entirely opposite end of the spectrum
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Victimized by lust, poverty, and hypocrisy, Tess is a woman whose intense vitality flares unforgettably against the bleak background of a dying rural society. Shaped by an acute sense of social injustice and by a vision of human fate cosmic in scope, her story is a singular blending of harsh realism and indelibly poignant beauty.
Publisher
PBS Distribution
Pub. Date
2013, c2012
Language
English
Description
These are hard times in the Quad Cities, a great American crossroads along the border of Iowa and Illinois, where the Mississippi River intersects Interstate 80. It's home to John Deere manufacturing and the nation's breadbasket. But it's also an area deeply scarred by the Recession. FRONTLINE spent months following three young girls who are growing up against the backdrop of their families' struggles against financial ruin.
Author
Language
English
Description
"From the beloved author of Dominicana, a GMA Book Club Pick and Women's Prize Finalist, an electrifying and indelible new novel about a woman who has lost everything but the chance to finally tell her story. Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work. Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market...
Author
Publisher
David C. Cook
Pub. Date
2010
Language
English
Description
J.D. and his wife Karlie have enjoyed a long, good life in the small town of Hanson, NC. But problems with the family business, conflict with their college-age daughter, and ripples in their otherwise happy marriage have threatened the idyll. Then things get even more challenging when J.D. meets a needy family just across a one lane bridge - only to discover things aren't at all what they seem. Is J.D. losing his mind? Or is he just where God wants...
Author
Publisher
The University of North Carolina Press
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
"In this age of shortened office visits, doctors take care of their patients' immediate needs and often elide their own personal histories. But as reflected in Broke, Michael Stein takes the time to listen to the experiences of his patients whose financial challenges complicate every decision in life they make. Stein asks his patients to tell him about their financial conditions not only to find out how to better treat them but also to bear witness...