North of Hope

7 best books like North of Hope (Jon Hassler): The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, Growing Up, All Over But the Shoutin', The Brothers K, A Death in the Family, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, Tisha: The Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be

Author	Farley Mowat
ISBN	0515056170

Farley Mowat's best loved book tells the splendidly entertaining story of his boyhood on the Canadian prairies. Mutt's pedigree was uncertain, but his madness was indisputable. He climbed trees and ladders, rode passenger in an open car wearing goggles and displaying hunting skills that bordered...

Growing Up

Author	Russell Baker
ISBN	0451168380

I found a paperback edition of this book, yellow with age. A note from my mother, age 97 and suffering from dementia fell out from between the pages. She said it was full of charm and humor and recommended it. She was right. Russell Baker had a hardscrabble childhood. His father's people were Virginians;...

All Over But the Shoutin'

Author	Rick Bragg
ISBN	0679774025

The story of a violent, war-haunted, alcoholic father and a strong-willed, loving mother who struggled to protect her three sons from the effects of poverty and ignorance that had tainted her own life.

The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for storytelling...

The Brothers K

Author

David James Duncan

Duncan took almost 10 years to follow up the publication of his much-praised first novel, The River Why, but this massive second effort is well worth the wait. It is a stunning work: a complex tapestry of family tensions, baseball, politics and religion, by turns hilariously funny and agonizingly sad....

A Death in the Family

Author	James Agee
ISBN	0375701230

The classic American novel, re-published for the 100th anniversary of James Agee's birth

Published in 1957, two years after its author's death at the age of forty-five, A Death in the Family remains a near-perfect work of art, an autobiographical novel that contains one of the most evocative...

Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Author	Thomas Moore
ISBN	0060922249

SECOND REVIEW, MARCH 2008:
There will be many revisions of this review because I will probably have to read and re-read this book for my entire life just to fully absorb it.

Freaking Thomas Moore. He grabs my soul where no other nonfiction spiritual author has managed. The other night, I...

Tisha: The Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness

Author

Robert Specht

Anne Hobbs is a prim and proper 19-year-old schoolteacher who yearns for adventure. She finds this and much more in a town with the unlikely name of Chicken, located deep in the Alaskan interior. It is 1927 and Chicken is a wild mining community flaming with gold fever. Anne quickly makes friends with...