NEW at the Library this Week
Rush to Danger
Ted Barris
Ted Barris will be speaking at the BWG Library on Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. This free event is open to the public, but space is limited. Please arrive early to ensure seating.
Noted military historian Ted Barris once asked his father, Alex, “What did you do in the war?” What the former US Army medic then told his son forms the thrust of Barris’s latest historic journey—an exploration of his father’s wartime experiences as a medic leading up to the Battle of the Bulge in 1944–45, along with stories of other medics in combat throughout history.
Barris’s research reveals that this bloodiest of WWII battles was shouldered largely by military medics. Like his father, Alex, medics in combat evacuated the wounded on foot, scrounged medical supplies where there were seemed to be none, and dodged snipers and booby traps on the most frigid and desolate battlefields of Europe. While retracing his father’s wartime experience, the author weaves into his narrative stories about the life-and-death struggles of military medical personnel during a century of service.
In this unique front-line recounting of the experiences of stretcher bearers, medical corpsmen, nurses, surgeons, orderlies, dentists and ambulance drivers, Barris explores the evolution of battlefield medicine at such historic engagements as Fredericksburg, Batoche, the Ypres Salient, the Somme, Vimy, Singapore, Dieppe, Normandy, Falaise, Bastogne, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. Barris’s sources reveal—like never before—why men and women sporting the red cross on their helmets or sleeves didn’t flee to safety but chose instead to rush to assist.
Graphic Novel
Escape from Syria
Samya Kullab
A graphic story of intense current events.
From the pen of former Daily Star (Lebanon) reporter Samya Kullab comes a breathtaking and hard-hitting story of one family's struggle to survive in the face of war, displacement, poverty and relocation.
Escape from Syria is a fictionalized account that calls on real-life circumstances and true tales of refugee families to serve as a microcosm of the Syrian uprising and the war and refugee crisis that followed.
Kullab's narrative masterfully maps both the collapse and destruction of Syria, and the real-life tragedies faced by its citizens still today. The family's escape from their homeland makes for a harrowing tale, but with their safe arrival in the West it serves as a hopeful endnote to this ongoing worldwide crisis.
Teen Reads
Orphan Monster
Matt Killeen
After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah finds herself on the run from the Nazis in Third Reich-ruled Germany. While trying to escape, Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment and a lockbox full of weapons. He’s part of the secret resistance against the Reich and he needs her help.
Sarah is to hid in plain sight at a boarding school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them.
Sarah may look like the rest of the girls, innocent, blonde-haired and young, but she refuses to become one of the monsters she’s surrounded by. She’s a brilliant con artist, convincing them she’s one of them, even as she lives in terror of being found out. And she’s determined to get her revenge on them all.
Special Collections – audio book
Paris Orphan
Natasha Lester
New York City/Paris, 1942: When American model Jessica May arrives in Europe to cover the war as a photojournalist for Vogue, most of the soldiers are determined to make her life as difficult as possible. But three friendships change that. Journalist Martha Gellhorn encourages Jess to bend the rules. Captain Dan Hallworth keeps her safe in dangerous places so she can capture the stories that truly matter. And most important of all, the love of a little orphan named Victorine gives Jess strength to do the impossible. But her success will come at a price...
Recommended by BWG Readers
Berlin
Jason Lutes
This is a Graphic Novel that crosses the lines into literary fiction. It is a wonderful representation of telling a moving and historically accurate story in a visual and meaningful way.
~Sarah
