National Network for Equitable Library Service

The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother Liam. It wasn't the drink that killed him - although that certainly helped - it was what happened to him as a boy in his grandmother's house, in the winter of 1968. His sister, Veronica was there then, as she is now: keeping the dead man company, just for another little while. The "Gathering" is a family epic, condensed and clarified through the remarkable lens of Anne Enright's unblinking eye.

The magical story of friendship between twenty-something Sylvia Hardy and Lydie Jim, an eighty-two year old Tlingit elder from the Yukon who met when the Sylvia agreed to be Lydie’s tutor.

"In 1880 the Government of Canada commenced construction of a national railroad that was promised to British Columbia as a condition of entering Confederation in 1871. The section of the railroad through the Fraser Canyon at Yale would prove to be the most formidable of construction projects. The contractor, Andrew Onderdonk, was in need of manpower to finish his section of the line, and to fill that need he contracted with Chinese firms for labourers direct from China.