If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

My Book Club chose this and I am really glad. I don't recall if I have ever read James Baldwin but I grew up seeing his books all the time. My mother was such a fan!
This was powerful, so prescient and upsetting. The love story was beautiful but oh, so sad. It is so sad that nothing much has changed over the course of 40+ years since it was written.

Bowlaway by Elizabeth Mc Cracken

For me, this started out strong but finished weak.  There were too many characters and too much "space" in between for me to link them together in the end. I think that this is a clever and endearing story, with really unusual characters, but somehow, I lost my keen interest as I moved along in the story.  Here is another take on the book, from BookBrowse:

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century - nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person - Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmark - with Bertha its most notable resident.

When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha's defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family's myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

One thing I will say about this book: I learned some new stuff! Fascinating story of the Molasses Factory explosion in Boston. So absurd that I figured the author made it up. NOPE! True story!

Away by Amy Bloom

Not sure why I have never read this author before, but was glad I checked out this book.  I'm being lazy now and quoting from Westchester Library System Review:

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom's work¿ her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart - come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

The characters she meets along the way are really great....and I loved the ending....truly was surprised by it, too.

I will read more Amy Bloom soon!