Bonnie's Books: This "particular" place is my place now

Particular Place and People: Story and Truth ~ by Linda Fine Hunt, 2023, historical fiction, 146 pages

This story spans 1954 to 1966. During this time, Linda lives in a neighborhood of 100 houses in University City, known as the Gates of Opportunity. She knows the names of all the homeowners. Just about everyone is Jewish, so they share a common culture and history. She is the first vegetarian in her neighbor-hood at age five and becomes known as a quirky individualist, who questions everything. She admires Louisa May Alcott and plans to be a writer herself, despite her mother's plans for her to be a secretary and marry a lawyer. Her home life is topsy-turvy at times, and she goes exploring to get away.

She is intrigued by a old stone mansion she can see from her front lawn and ventures there to explore a different place and culture. With the help of a librarian, she discovers several cultures and prominent people lived in that mansion over the last 100 years. She wants to understand the history and what happens when a culture replaces another. In other words, why do current residents move when a new culture starts to occupy the land?

I decided to get a copy of this book because it is about University City, where I live. I learned about it when I read an email from the UCity Public Library (yes, people here shorten "University City" to "UCity"):

"Our second author visit will take place just a few days later, on Friday, Sept. 13 at 11 a.m. Former University City resident Linda Fine Hunt will read from and discuss her book, Particular Place and People, a fictionalized version of her life growing up in University City in the 1950s and '60s."

I've only lived here for just over a decade, but I am curious to see what she writes about this part of town.

Nightwoods ~ by Charles Frazier, 2011, literary fiction (North Carolina), 272 pages

In a small town in North Carolina in the early 1960s, a young woman named Luce inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins. She had been content to live apart from the small community around her, but the children cracked open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, and dangerous ways. I got both of these books recently.