Jacob Stevenson had the tallest Mohawk in the history of Hood River High School. So begins the delightful and funny debut novel, The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin. Alice, a widow, hates her job and loves her bees. Jacob, a paraplegic teenager, has all sorts of issues and a horrible father, and Harry, after a life so far of poor decisions, is heading nowhere. Thrown together through need, the trio mends and heals through caring for Alice's bees.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead was one of my favorite books I read in 2019, and the perfect book for this moment. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize this year, there probably isn't much I can add to all of the accolades except to say that they are all deserved. This book is simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful. The tension between injustice and resistance grabs the attention of the reader and demands the reader keep turning pages. This book is wrenching but it is near-perfect in its execution. Colson Whitehead is a virtuoso writer who is ridiculously talented.