You Are Not Alone: Michael Through a Brother's Eyes

Jermaine Jackson—older than Michael by four years—offers a keenly observed memoir tracing his brother’s life starting from their shared childhood and extending through the Jackson 5 years, Michael’s phenomenal solo career, his loves, his suffering, and his tragic end. It is a sophisticated, no-holds-barred examination of the man, aimed at fostering a true and final understanding of who he was, what he was, and what shaped him.

Jermaine knows the real Michael as only a brother can. In this raw, honest, and poignant account, he reveals Michael the private person, not Michael “the King of Pop.” He doesn’t flinch from tackling the tough issues: the torrid press, the scandals, the allegations, the court cases, the internal politics, the ill-fated This Is It tour, and the disturbing developments in the days leading up to Michael’s death. But where previous works have presented only thin versions of a media construct, he provides a rare glimpse into the complex heart, mind, and soul of a brilliant but sometimes troubled entertainer. As a witness to history on the inside, Jermaine is the only person qualified to deliver the real Michael and reveal what made him tick, his private opinions and unseen emotions through the most headline-making episodes of his life.

Now with an emotional afterword addressing 2011’s dramatic Conrad Murray trial, this biography is filled with keen insight, rich anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes detail. You Are Not Alone is the book for any true Michael Jackson fan and for anyone trying to make sense of the artist whose death was so premature. -- Publisher description

Library Journal Review Verdict: "This is likely the most intimate, detailed account of Michael Jackson's life we will ever get."

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Street Shadows

Street Shadows recounts Jerald Walker’s renunciation of the “thug life” he had embraced as a teenager on the South Side of Chicago in favor of the education and middle-class life his parents had always dreamed of for their children. By turns ironic, humorous, angry, and poignant, Walker’s narrative dramatically captures his pursuit and embodiment of the “American dream”: the effort to rise above obstacles such as racism and poverty through hard work and determination.

Walker explores questions of race and identity through the lens of personal choice—including decisions he made as a high school dropout, a drug and alcohol abuser, a returning student, a young academic, a visitor to Africa in search of his roots, and a husband and father, as well as the diverse choices made by his blind parents, his six siblings, and his wife and her family. He highlights the importance of education, the values of self-help and self-reliance, and his rejection of the victim mentality that many feel pervades black communities.

Winner of the 2011 PEN New England/L. L. Winship Award for Nonfiction, Street Shadows is an eloquent account of how the past shadows but need not determine the present. It is also a stirring portrait of two Americas—one hopeless, the other inspirational—embodied within the same man. - Publisher Description

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Claiming Ground

In 1977, Laura Bell, at loose ends after graduating from college, leaves her family home in Kentucky for a wild and unexpected adventure: herding sheep in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin. Inexorably drawn to this life of solitude and physical toil, a young woman in a man’s world, she is perhaps the strangest member of this beguiling community of drunks and eccentrics. So begins her unabating search for a place to belong and for the raw materials with which to create a home and family of her own. Yet only through time and distance does she acquire the wisdom that allows her to see the love she lived through and sometimes left behind.

By turns cattle rancher, forest ranger, outfitter, masseuse, wife and mother, Bell vividly recounts her struggle to find solid earth in which to put down roots. Brimming with careful insight and written in a spare, radiant prose, her story is a heart-wrenching ode to the rough, enormous beauty of the Western landscape and the peculiar sweetness of hard labor, to finding oneself even in isolation, to a life formed by nature, and to the redemption of love, whether given or received.

Quietly profound and moving, astonishing in its honesty, in its deep familiarity with country rarely seen so clearly, and in beauties all its own, Claiming Ground is a truly singular memoir. -- Publisher description

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Happy: A Memoir (Iowa Connection)

His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every girl, the hard-partying kid everyone called Happy. In the spring of 1997, he had his first stroke. For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcohol and drug abuse. His charming and carefree exterior masked his self-destructive and sometimes cruel behavior as he endured two more brain bleeds and a crippling depression. After undergoing brain surgery, he is nursed back to health by his free-spirited artist mother, who once again teaches him to stand on his own. Alive with unexpected humor and sensuality, Happy is a hypnotic self-portrait of a young man confronting the wreckage of his own body; it is also the deeply moving story of a mother’s redemptive and healing powers. Alex Lemon’s Technicolor sentences pop and sing as he writes about survival—of the body and of the human spirit. -- Publisher description

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I Am Hutterite

Ann-Marie Dornn was born into a reclusive and extraordinary Hutterite colony near Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. This religious community was an idyllic place for a growing young girl, filled with adventure, strong bonds of friendship, rich delicious food, and a deep sense of belonging. But for her parents, it had become a community teeming with tension and conflict.

So in 1969, her parents did the unthinkable. They left the colony with seven children, and little else, to start a new life. Overnight, the Dornns were thrust into a society they did not understand and that knew little of their unique culture. The transition was overwhelming. Desperate to be accepted, ten-year-old Ann-Marie was forced to deny her heritage in order to fit in with her peers. She kept her secret well into adulthood, hoping to avoid the prejudice so associated with her culture.

I Am Hutterite chronicles her quest to come to terms with a painful past. Rich with memorable characters and vivid descriptions, this groundbreaking narrative shines a light on intolerance, illuminating the simple truth that beneath every human exterior beats a heart longing for understanding and acceptance. -- Publisher description

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Dust Tracks on a Road

"I have been in Sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and a sword in my hands."

First published in 1942 at the crest of her popularity, this is Zora Neale Hurston's unrestrained account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to prominence among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Full of wit and wisdom, and audaciously spirited, Dust Tracks on a Road offers a rare, poignant glimpse of the life -- public and private -- of a premier African-American writer, artist, anthropologist and champion of the black heritage.

Secret Daughter: A Mixed Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring white actress, and James "Stump" Cross, a well-known black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by black friends when she was four years old and could no longer "pass" as white, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race.  Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June's astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive.  This is an inspiring testimony to the endurance of love between mother and daughter, and between a child and her adoptive parents.  It is also a moving story of the power of community. -- From the Cover 

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Breaking Clean

In this extraordinary literary debut third-generation homesteader Judy Blunt describes her hardscrabble life on the prairies of eastern Montana in prose as big and bold as the landscape.

On a ranch miles from nowhere, Judy Blunt grew up with cattle and snakes, outhouse and isolation, epic blizzards and devastating prairie fires. She also grew up with a set of rules and roles prescribed to her sex long before she was born, a chafing set of strictures she eventually had no choice but to flee, taking along three children and leaving behind a confused husband and the only life she’d ever known. Gritty, lyrical, unsentimental and wise, Breaking Clean is at once informed by the myths of the West and powerful enough to break them down.-- from the Publisher

Blurbs from the Backlist highlights items in the Des Moines Public Library collections that are currently available, meaning, you could take one home today!

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

"The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his."

Two kids named Wes Moore were born blocks apart within a year of each other. Both grew up fatherless in similar Baltimore neighborhoods and had difficult childhoods; both hung out on street corners with their crews; both ran into trouble with the police. How, then, did one grow up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader, while the other ended up a convicted murderer serving a life sentence? Wes Moore, the author of this fascinating book, sets out to answer this profound question. In alternating narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of a generation of boys trying to find their way in a hostile world. -- from the Publisher

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Heart of the Storm

With all the nail-biting excitement of a thriller, Heart of the Storm brings to life dramatic jungle rescues in the Philippines, the longest helicopter rescue mission in history to save crew members of a Ukrainian freighter 840 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, harrowing desert operations deep in the Iraqi desert, a nearly disastrous rescue off a listing two-masted schooner during an Atlantic winter storm, and many more.

During the course of his career, Fleming was responsible for saving 293 lives, including that of Dr. Jerri Nielsen, the physician and Antarctic researcher who in 1999 was airlifted from the South Pole in time to receive emergency breast cancer treatment. From the South Pole to the South Pacific to the Arabian desert, Heart of the Storm vividly recounts tales of bravery and adventure under the most extreme conditions. Col. Fleming brings us into the eye of the hurricane to experience life as it is lived by a handful of airborne heroes who routinely risk everything to save strangers from the jaws of death. An engrossing chronicle of a fascinating life, Heart of the Storm is a nonstop adrenaline rush and must reading for anyone who enjoys a rousing true-life adventure story.-- from the inside flap.


Blurbs from the Backlist highlights items in the Des Moines Public Library collections that are currently available, meaning, you could take one home today!