Central Skagit Library District

'Fiction for the way we live.'

If you've ever come across the word "Wuthering", chances are that either Kate Bush played over the speakers or you were reading the title of this very book, as nobody has used it in any other contexts since 1847. And while you should take that statement with a grain of salt, let there be no doubt that "Wuthering Heights" is a big fictional deal. After a supernatural encounter in his landlord's farmhouse – the titular "Wuthering Heights", Mr. Lockwood...

The witty and haunting narration, a masterpiece of vernacular in the tradition of Twain, follows the events of the Two Medicine country's summer: the tide of sheep moving into the high country, the capering Fourth of July rodeo and community dance, and an end-of-August forest fire high in the Rockies that brings the book, as well as the McCaskill family's struggle within itself, to a stunning climax. It is a season of escapade as well as drama, during...

Photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon is renowned for his documentation of the French countryside. In Modern Life he casts an affectionate and irreverent eye on a small community of farmers as they are confronted by the problems and challenges the contemporary world brings. Treated with equal suspicion, strangers and women are gradually accepted into the fabric of the farming life so as to sustain a way of life that celebrates the traditions...

"In a secessionist rural state that has cut itself off completely from urban centers, where living is hardscrabble and poor but "free," Brooke Holland runs a farm with her husband, Milo, and two daughters. Their life at the fringes of modern society is tenuous - they make barely enough from each harvest to keep going - yet Brooke cherishes the loving, peaceful life they have carved out for themselves. She has even begun to believe she is free from...

Reaching her sixteenth year in the harsh Ozarks while caring for her poverty-stricken family, Ree Dolly learns that they will lose their house unless her bail-skipping father can be found and made to appear at an upcoming court date.

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winner: the much-anticipated final volume of her magnificent, best-selling American trilogy, which brings the beloved Langdon family into our present times and beyond. A lot can happen in 100 years, as Jane Smiley has shown to dazzling effect in her astonishing, critically acclaimed Last Hundred Years Trilogy. When Golden Age, its last installment, opens in 1987, the next generation of the Langdon family is facing economic,...

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society, a devoted father (Viggo Mortensen) dedicates his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults. But when a tragedy strikes the family, they are forced to leave this self-created paradise and begin a journey into the outside world that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he's taught them. Nominated for Best...

It is December, and there are many things for the family to do around the farm to get it ready for winter.

Mildred Armstrong Kalish's Little Heathens is a compelling memoir of her hardscrabble life on an Iowa farm during the 1930s. With no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.