Remembering the Kent State Massacre

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On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced that the United States military would invade Cambodia, furthering their involvement in the Vietnam War. 

On May 1, over 500 students gathered on an outdoor common area in the center of campus to demonstrate against President Nixon’s announcement. At this demonstration, a rally was planned for May 4, to continue the protest. During the next few days, students kept up the demonstrations, and after Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom declared a state of emergency, the Ohio National Guard were called on May 2.  

On May 3, Governor Rhodes said they were going to “eradicate the problem” and that the protestors were “the worst type of people that we harbor in America” (Kent State). Another rally took place that evening, with Guardsmen tear gassing participants in order to get them to disperse. A curfew was enforced, and several students were bayoneted by Guardsmen. 

On May 4, the originally planned protest took place as scheduled. The University tried to advertise it had been cancelled, but students (and some non-students as well) gathered anyway, even when tear gas was used to get them to disperse. At 12:24 PM, Guardsmen began firing at the protestors for approximately 13 seconds, killing four students—Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer—and injuring nine students— Joseph Lewis, John Cleary, Thomas Grace, Alan Canfora, Dean Kahler, Douglas Wrentmore, James Russell, Robert Stamps, and Donald MacKenzie. The University President closed the school and remained closed for six weeks.  

This is an incredibly brief overview of the Kent State shootings and I highly recommend the Kent State University’s Digital Archives for oral histories, timelines, newspaper articles, interviews, and more. Below are a few titles available through the library for more information: 

Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio by Derf Backderf 

Kent State/May 4: Echoes through a Decade by Scott L. Bills 

13 Seconds: A Look Back at the Kent State Shootings by Philip Caputo 

Thirteen Seconds: Confrontation at Kent State by Joe Eszterhas 

67 Shots: Kent State and the End of American Innocence by Howard B. Means 

Kent State: What Happened and Why by James A. Michener 

To Heal Kent State: A Memorial Meditation by Kim Sorvig 

Kent State by Deborah Wiles 

-Linnea

New Books Tuesday @ RRPL

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In this week’s special picks there are new exciting detective, mystery, suspense, and many more genres for you to choose from! Enjoy!

The 23rd Midnight

When an obsessed maniac turns serial killer Evan Burke’s true-crime story into a playbook, adding some of his own gruesome touches, Detective Lindsay Boxer, who put Burke in jail, tracks this elusive suspect, who is determined to put an end to the Murder Club permanently.

The Wedding Planner

Signing up for several lavish affairs, in addition to her mother’s next marriage and her twin sister’s modest ceremony, wildly successful wedding planner Faith Ferguson grapples with private quarrels, unplanned pregnancies, family scandals, dark secrets and almost cancelled ceremonies, proving that there is more than one path to happily ever after.

The Bride Wore White

When she is kidnapped, drugged and wakes up in a bloodstained wedding dress next to a dead man, psychic Prudence Ryland, framed for murder, knows who the real killer is and finds an unexpected ally in Jack Wingate, a crime boss’s associate, who is the only one who believes her.

All the Days of Summer

A divorced empty-nester moves into a cottage on Nantucket and is irritated when her adult son arrives with his serious girlfriend and the two women must learn to overcome their differences to achieve the future they want.

The Half Moon

Longtime bartender Malcolm Gephardt realizes his dream of owning a bar, while his wife Jess, a lawyer struggling with fertility issues, wonders how to reshape her life, in a novel told over the course of one tumultuous week, laying bare the complexities of marriage, family, longing and desire.

Meet Me at the Lake

In desperate need of a lifeline, 32-year-old Fern Brookbanks finds it in the form of Will Baxter, who rescued her nine years ago, and, believing he is hiding something, but knowing he’s the only one who understands what she’s going through, wonders if she can do the same for him.

The Ferryman

A ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process and, when necessary, enforcing it Proctor Bennet, of the Department of Social Contracts, receives a disturbing and cryptic message from his father, while The Support Staff, who keep Prospera running, organize a revolution that causes Proctor to question everything he once believed.

~Semanur

New Historical Fiction

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The Thread Collectors

Shaunna J. Edwards & Alyson Richman

In 1863, Stella, a black woman living in New Orleans, must say goodbye to William as he leaves to join the Union army. William is an enslaved flutist which saves him from the battlefield most of the time. Stella and William want to marry but cannot since Stella is owned by a white landowner who takes advantage of her on a regular basis. She soon becomes pregnant. Stella has a remarkable talent for using thread over and over again. Nothing is ever wasted. She is able to cleverly reuse thread to create maps that help slaves escape.

In New York City, Lily, a Jewish woman, suffragette, and abolitionist must say goodbye to her husband Jacob, a trombonist, composer, and Union army musician. Lily contributes to the abolitionist movement in New York.

William and Jacob develop a friendship because of their music while serving in the army. They are invited to entertain those in authority. Happily their friendship continues long after the Civil War.

This is an interesting story demonstrating the often degrading treatment of Black and Jewish soldiers during the Civil War.

~Emma

New fiction

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So Long, Chester Wheeler

Catherine Ryan Hyde

Lewis Madigan’s elderly neighbor Chester Wheeler is dying of cancer. Several of his home healthcare aides have quit. Chester is a very difficult person to be around for a variety of reasons, and his family will not take care of him. Chester’s daughter Ellie is desperate to find someone to take the job and finally convinces Lewis to give it a try. Lewis is desperate for money and Ellie has promised a generous paycheck.

Lewis is good with Chester. He ignores a lot and hollers back at Chester. Chester has a final trip in mind and Lewis agrees to drive Chester’s old Winnebago cross county to visit his ex-wife. After many difficult days of traveling, the pair finally make it to Sue’s home, but she refuses to talk to Chester and refuses to allow him in her home. With Lewis’ help, Sue and Chester are able to talk things over. Before heading back home, Sue suggests that they travel to visit Chester’s friend Mike. They served together in Vietnam and have things to talk over.

On the way back home, Chester dies.

Home healthcare aide becomes Lewis’ new profession. He eventually decides to become a nurse but promises not to quit helping another very difficult patient. His schooling is placed on hold for a time to fulfill his promise.

~Emma

Spring into a Page-Turner

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Philip Solomon is an author suffering from writer’s block. He decides to write what he knows and begins to document the disappearance of his friend Jeff’s mother, some 40 years previously.

On November 12, 1975, 10-year-old Miranda Larkin arrives home from school to discover her mother Jane missing without a trace. There is only one suspect – Dan Larkin, Jane’s husband and father to Miranda and her brothers, Jeff and Alex. Dan is an unflappable criminal defense attorney and a narcissist, but as Jane’s body is never found, he is never charged with murder. As years pass, Dan begins to suffer from dementia, and as Phil Solomon begins research for his book, old feelings and suspicion begin to surface once again. Is it possible that the Larkin kids were raised by a man who killed their mother?

William Landay’s All That Is Mine I Carry With Me is the perfect blend of a literary whodunnit and legal thriller and is twisty emotional family drama that keeps you guessing. Place your hold for this (deservedly) popular read and then just try and put it down after the first page.

-Carol

Book Review: The Ingenue

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The Ingenue by Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Saskia Kreis is a piano prodigy returning home after her mother’s death. Riding into her hometown of Milwaukee on fumes, Saskia is barely making ends meet by writing SAT questions. Her days of tickling the ivories are long behind her, abruptly ending as she entered adulthood. It wasn’t easy, after all, to be the child genius of an accomplished classical musician and a renowned author-illustrator.

Saskia knows that the family home, named Elf House, will be hers one day soon. A gothic mansion, the house has been in the family for generations and has its quirks. But when her mother’s will doesn’t name Saskia as the inheritor of the home, she has questions. Why did her mother leave the unfinished manuscript in her famous Fairy Tales for Little Feminists series to Saskia? And most of all, why did she leave the house to Patrick Kintner? Patrick is a spectral shadow on Saskia’s young adulthood that she just can’t shake. Elf House is meant to be Saskia’s, and she will do whatever it takes to make sure that her mother’s family legacy is protected.

Author Kapelke-Dale follows her debut The Ballerinas with a #MeToo story that will keep you reading “just one more chapter.”

Request a print copy, ebook, or eaudiobook.

-Melinda

National Library Week

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For National Library Week, which runs from April 23-29, the staff at Rocky River Public Library have filled quite a few shelves full of our book recommendations. From nonfiction to graphic novels to fantasy to audiobooks, we’ve got a little bit of everything for every type of reader.  

But if you can’t make it in person to see our staff recommendations, here’s a list of just a few of the books staff have picked out:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 

A reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel, Mexican Gothic follows the experiences of a courageous socialite in 1950s Mexico who is drawn into the treacherous secrets of an isolated mansion. 

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis 

Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it. When her older sister, Anna, was murdered three years ago and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best: The language of violence. 

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara 

An account of the unsolved Golden State Killer case, written by the late author of the TrueCrimeDiary.com website traces the assaults and murders of dozens of victims and the author’s determined efforts to help identify the killer and bring him to justice. 

Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak 

Three Daughters of Eve is set over an evening in contemporary Istanbul and follows the efforts of a woman to navigate cultural, religious and economic tensions during a seaside mansion dinner party while enduring painful memories of her deep multicultural friendships during her Oxford years. 

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff 

Zuboff explores the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, presenting a detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism,” and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control human behavior. 

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami 

A clerk in a Tokyo of the near future works in an organization that controls the flow of information to society–employing electronic brainwashing and other insidious techniques–a job that contributes to his increasing sense of dehumanization. 

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 

Keefe documents the notorious abduction and murder of I.R.A. Troubles victim Jean McConville in 1972 Belfast, exploring how the case reflected the brutal conflicts of Northern Ireland and their ongoing repercussions. 

Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan 

Glitter and Glue presents an account of the author’s perspectives on motherhood, which have been shaped by her job as a nanny for a grieving Australian family and her character-testing experiences with her daughters. 

Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor E. Frankl 

Despite the unspeakable horrors that Frankl faced in the Nazi concentration camps, he learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to “say yes to life”–a profound and timeless lesson for us all. 

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker 

Kolker tells the heartrending story of a midcentury American family with 12 children, 6 of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. 

-Linnea 

The Forever Witness: How Genetic Genealogy Solved a Cold Case Double Murder by Edward Humes

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On November 19, 1987 Jay Cook, 20, and his girlfriend Tanya Van Cuylenborg, 18, set off from Saanich, British Columbia for an overnight trip to Seattle, Washington. The purpose of the trip was to pick up a part for Jay’s father, but Tanya was along for the adventure. They never made it home. The couple was reported missing on November 20th. Tanya’s body was found on November 24. Two days later and 60 miles away authorities recovered Jay’s body. Detective’s suspected they were dealing with the work of a serial killer, but frustratingly, they just could not make a case. With no leads, the case went cold, while the biological evidence collected from the scenes sat in a long-term storage deep freeze just waiting for advancements in DNA technology.

Meanwhile, genealogist CeCe Moore was pioneering the use of genetic genealogy to solve cold cases. In 2018 she joined Parabon Nanolabs as head of their genetic genealogy unit. Her first case was that of Tanya and Jay. When Detective Jim Scharf sent biological evidence to Parabon, he had no idea he and Moore were about to make history. In May, 2018 William Earl Talbott II was arrest, thanks to genetic genealogy research. In 2021, he because the first person to be convicted based on DNA evidence that was run through genealogy databases.


This was a meticulously researched and well told story that not only treats the victims and their families with respect and care, but also deftly navigates the controversial aspects of genetic genealogy and privacy rights. A must read for true crime fans.

Request a copy of The Forever Witness here or find digital copies here. Thanks to Netgally.com for an advanced reader copy.

Happy Reading!

Megan

Reads for National Arab American Heritage Month

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April is National Arab American Heritage Month (NAAHM), which began as a grassroots effort of the Arab America Foundation. Recognized nationally by President Joe Biden in 2021, this month recognizes and celebrates Arab American culture, heritage, and contributions. According to the Arab America Institute, approximately 3.7 million Americans trace their roots to an Arab country, including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and others.

In honor of NAAHM, here are titles from our collection that highlight Arab American stories.

Fiction

Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.

A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum

Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the expectations of her oppressive mother-in-law Fareeda and strange new husband.

Brooklyn, 2008. Eighteen-year-old Deya, Isra’s oldest daughter, must meet with potential husbands at her grandmother Fareeda’s insistence, though her only desire is to go to college. 

The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah

Afaf Rahman, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, is the principal of Nurrideen School for Girls, a Muslim school in the Chicago suburbs. One morning, a shooter–radicalized by the online alt-right–attacks the school.As Afaf listens to his terrifying progress, we are swept back through her memories: the bigotry she faced as a child, her mother’s dreams of returning to Palestine, and the devastating disappearance of her older sister that tore her family apart.

Nonfiction

I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib

The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dreams themselves, Malaka navigated her childhood chasing her parents’ ideals, learning to code-switch between her family’s Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid.

The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber

Diana Abu-Jaber weaves the story of her life in upstate New York and in Jordan around vividly remembered meals: everything from Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts with her Arab-American cousins to goat stew feasts under a Bedouin tent in the desert. These sensuously evoked meals in turn illuminate the two cultures of Diana’s childhood – American and Jordanian – and the richness and difficulty of straddling both.

Conditional Citizens by Laila Lalami

What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize­­-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections. Tapping into history, politics, and literature, she elucidates how accidents of birth–such as national origin, race, and gender–that once determined the boundaries of Americanness still cast their shadows today.

For more recommendations, Hoopla has audiobooks, comics, eBooks, music, and videos available here: https://hoopla.app.link/APgxui4Mnyb

Happy reading!

Melinda

Spring into Historical Fiction

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In 1907, Sylvie Pelletier’s French-Canadian family relocates from Vermont to Moonstone Colorado for her father’s job as a quarry man for The Padgett Fuel and Stone Company. When the impressionable Sylvie is asked to work that summer in the manor house for the Padgett family, she is awe-struck by her surroundings and is drawn to her employer, the charming “Countess” Inge, and to Inge’s stepson Jasper, the heir to the family fortune. By the end of the season, however, Sylvie sees through the Padgett’s lofty ideas for the town’s future, and understands the feelings of discontent among the workers and their families who make up the town of Moonstone.

Sylvie learns even more when she becomes an apprentice to Miss. Katrina Redmond, the bold local editor of the local newspaper who is not afraid to publish unbecoming stories involving the company. When tragedy strikes, Sylvie is no longer content to sit on the sidelines and involves herself in attempting to unionize the stone workers, alongside the likes of Mary Harris “Mother” Jones.

Based on true stories from Colorado history, Gilded Mountain by Kate Manning is epic historical fiction to savor, with a memorable leading character who must come of age before her time. For fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds, this tale of the American West is beautifully and at times heartbreakingly told and it expertly captures the difficulties of the era and the disparities between the working poor and the robber barons they toiled for.

-Carol