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Award winners make good book group choices. Winners of the 2009 Midwest Booksellers' Choice Awards, which honor "authors from the Midwest Booksellers Association region and/or books about the region" and are voted on by MBA members, have been announced.
Winners include:
* Fiction: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (Find this book in our catalog)
"Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm-and into Edgar's mother's affections. Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires-spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward. David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes-the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain-create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic." (catalog notes)
* Nonfiction: Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting by Michael Perry (Find this book in our catalog)
"In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, the acclaimed author of Truck: A Love Story gives us a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country... Alternately hilarious, tender, and as real as pigs in mud, Coop is suffused with a contemporary desire to reconnect with the earth, with neighbors, with meaning . . . and with chickens." (catalog notes)
Honor recipients:
* Fiction: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Find this book in our catalog)
"Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt - a passionate man with his own dark secrets - has plans of his own for his new wife..." (catalog notes)
*Nonfiction: Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter (Find this book in our catalog)
"Traces the author's discovery of a half-frozen kitten in the drop-box of her small-community Iowa library and the feline's development into an affable library cat." (catalog notes)

Labels: Midwest Booksellers' Association awards