Everyday life is essential. Having lost her husband in a plane crash, a mother is encouraged by the growth of a persimmon tree, to convey the importance of life, despite the despair and hard life she and her children face.

It is 1942 in the Dutch East Indies, and Nick Duncan is a young Australian butterfly collector in search of a single exotic butterfly. With invading Japanese forces coming closer by the day, Nick falls in love with the beguiling Anna van Heerden. Their time together is brief, as both are forced into separate, dangerous escapes. They plan to reunite and marry in Australia but it is several years before their paths cross again, scarred forever by the dark events of a long, cruel war. In The Persimmon Tree, Bryce Courtenay gives us a story of love and friendship set against the dramatic backdrop of the Pacific during the Second World War.

Raised with twelve brothers in a part of the segregated South that provided no school for African American children, Sylvia Bell White went North as a teenager, dreaming of a nursing career, but in Milwaukee she and her brothers found only racial discrimination, and she had to persevere through racial rebuffs to find work. When a Milwaukee police officer killed her younger brother in 1958, the Bell family suspected a racial murder but could do nothing to prove it?until twenty years later, when one of the officers involved in the incident unexpectedly came forward. Sylvia was the driving force behind the family's four-year quest for justice through a civil rights lawsuit.

The second novel in Howard W. Odums Black Ulysses trilogy

"Dr. Kikumura has written a moving study of a woman whose large spirit, courage, dedication to her principles, and common sense is a model to women of all ages and ethnic origins. It reminds us of the uses of culture – giving otherwise ordinary lives a dignity and purpose that enlarges them, linking even mundane concerns to a meaningful sense of history, to others, to one's own ancestors, to the gods. Dr. Kikumura writes about her own mother, a Japanese American whose life works are of the kind not ordinarily recorded or applauded. Yet her story is worthy of admiration; not less than inspirational at times, We can be grateful that anthropologists have recently come to appreciate the value of looking at the significant people in their own experience, as people having something to teach the world, for a tale told about people known and loved has an immediacy and vitality that is completely engaging and convincing. The reader leaves this work with affection and a touch of envy, for the insight into the mother and daughter – their special relationship deepened and understood through the device of a conscious study." Barbara Myerhoff University of Southern California

In a neighborhood jammed with look-alike clapboard houses in a South Carolina Cotton mill village, author William Hale grew up as an inquisitive boy who climbed trees, played sandlot baseball, and learned his greatest life lessons from unexpected places. Amid the darkness of the Great Depression, Hale was never without food, love, or a little bit of sparkle from Azzie, a washwoman with a broad smile, big voice, and never-ending encouragement for little Hale. With humor, sensitivity, and candor, Hale delves deeply into the delicate fabric of life as he details experiences derived from a distinctive coming-of-age journey full of fun, challenges, and timeless messages. As he learned to love ?winnie? soup, whiled away the hours on the porch swing, and discovered that time is the greatest healer of all, Hale details how he grew from boy into man and realized the impact of his choices that eventually led him in a different direction. The Village and Beyond offers one man's poignant reflections on life as he revels in the powerful world of the human spirit and discovers that he will never be without questions.