The Hillcrest Library Book Club meets once a month to offer CCF caregivers the opportunity to discuss stories that can educate us about how to be more compassionate and less biased.
Engage with other book club members on our Fable page.
Use your CCF Library account to request these books from our network of libraries throughout Ohio. Don't have an account? Sign up here:
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by
Seventeen-year-old Lenni Pettersson lives on the Terminal Ward at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital. Though the teenager has been told she's dying, she still has plenty of living to do. Joining the hospital's arts and crafts class, she meets the magnificent Margot, an 83-year-old, purple-pajama-wearing, fruitcake-eating rebel, who transforms Lenni in ways she never imagined. As their friendship blooms, a world of stories opens for these unlikely companions who, between them, have been alive for one hundred years. Though their days are dwindling, both are determined to leave their mark on the world. With the help of Lenni's doting palliative care nurse and Father Arthur, the hospital's patient chaplain, Lenni and Margot devise a plan to create one hundred paintings showcasing the stories of the century they have lived--stories of love and loss, of courage and kindness, of unexpected tenderness and pure joy. Though the end is near, life isn't quite done with these unforgettable women just yet.
Monday, July 21: 12-2 pm
The Women by
The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.
Wednesday, August 20: 11am-1pm
The Covenant of Water by
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India's Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning--and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl--and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi--will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants. A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
Monday, September 15, 5-7pm
ONLINE ONLY, in conversation with the author!
Stash: My Life in Hiding by
After years of hiding her addiction from everyone--stockpiling pills in her Louboutins and elaborately scheduling her withdrawals between PTA meetings, baby showers, and tennis matches--Laura Cathcart Robbins is running out of places to hide. She has learned the hard way that even her high-profile marriage and Hollywood lifestyle can't protect her from the pain she's keeping bottled up inside. Facing divorce, the possibility of a grueling custody battle, and the insistent voice of internalized racism that nags at her as a Black woman in a startlingly white world, Laura wonders just how much more she can take. Now, with courageous and candid openness, she reveals how she started the long journey towards sobriety, unexpectedly found new love, and dismantled the wall she had built around herself, brick by brick.
October: Date/Time TBD:
Healing: When a nurse becomes a patient by
Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she's mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being a "difficult" patient could mean she gets worse care. Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry "cures" us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for.
September 2024: Why We Revolt by Dr. Victor Montori
Winner of the 2018 PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence, Why We Revolt peels back the curtain to expose the corruption and negligence present in the modern American healthcare system--and how, with focused collaboration, we can revolutionize the way our country approaches patient care. Told through a series of essays and short stories, Dr. Victor M. Montori's Why We Revolt uncovers how, over the past few decades, the American healthcare system has become increasingly exploited and industrialized. The costs of health insurance and standard medical procedures continue to soar, physicians are pressured to push through cases without regards for patient satisfaction, and the system pursues standardization, which causes individualized healthcare to become generic and impersonal. Still, the United States falls behind other countries on patient outcomes, and physicians continue to be overloaded with tedious administrative work as the emphasis is placed on profits instead of patient care. Dr. Montori's first-hand account is a must-read for both physicians and patients who want to understand how--and why--the American healthcare system fails the very people it was meant to serve, and what direct actions we can take to transform it. The book's content serves as a warning that, without radical change, the system will continue to help economically-driven corporations profit, harming doctors and patients in the process. Why We Revolt is an inspiring call-to-action for physicians, policymakers, and patients alike to rethink the way we approach healthcare. By sharing moving, personal anecdotes from decades on the front line, Dr. Montori proves that with education, optimism, and compassion, we can work together to change the face of the current healthcare system and transform it into one that offers tailored healthcare in a kind and careful way. All proceeds from Why We Revolt go directly to Patient Revolution, a non-profit organization founded by Dr. Montori that empowers patients, caregivers, community advocates, and clinicians to rebuild our healthcare system one bit at a time. *** "In this brave book, Dr. Montori channels George Orwell to expose the corruption -- and absurdity -- of health care. Filled with compassionate and clear-eyed observations, Why We Revolt will leave you fired up, no matter what side of the gurney you are on." - Julia Belluz, senior health correspondent at Vox.com. "We revolt because our health - our very lives - matter. Why We Revolt does not serve as a blueprint but as an inspiration for patients and clinicians who are ready to pry open the idea of "healthcare" and make it about actual health and care. This book is a necessary catalyst for conversations that will revolutionize patient care." - Kerri Sparling, diabetes patient advocate and creator of SixUntilMe.com. "This marvelously optimistic book is an urgent and cogent call to action that is firmly rooted in direct experience of the harms inflicted, not only on patients but also on those who try to care for them, by the industrialization of contemporary healthcare." - Iona Heath, medical doctor and writer, former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners. "A thoroughly convincing, mobilizing, and supremely optimistic call to action for medical industry reform." -- Kirkus "Beautifully written, with an elegantly simple and though-provoking message, I recommend it wholeheartedly, and, once you have read it, pass it on to someone else. We need a change in health care, and this may be the answer." - Samuel Finnikin, British Journal of General Practice
February 2025: Demon Copperhead by
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.
March 2025: What the Eyes Don't See by
Here is the inspiring story of how Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, alongside a team of researchers, parents, friends, and community leaders, discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan, were being exposed to lead in their tap water--and then battled her own government and a brutal backlash to expose that truth to the world. Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don't See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. And at the center of the story is Dr. Mona herself--an immigrant, doctor, scientist, and mother whose family's activist roots inspired her pursuit of justice. What the Eyes Don't See is a riveting account of a shameful disaster that became a tale of hope, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their--and all of our--children.
May 2025: Rough Sleepers by
After Jim O'Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General, the hospital's chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? That year turned into O'Connell's life's calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O'Connell and his colleagues as they work with thousands of homeless patients, some of whom we meet in this illuminating book. We travel with O'Connell as he navigates the city streets at night, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city's most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls "a system of friends."
