Verona Reads!

Everyone Who is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis 
by Jonathan Blitzer

Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. For years, the majority came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but many more have begun their journey much farther away. Some flee persecution, others crime or hunger. They may have already been deported, but the United States remains their only hope for safety and prosperity.

Northwoods 
by Amy Pease

Set in a fictional but very realistic small town in Northern Wisconsin, this novel explores the dark underbelly of an idyllic appearing rural community. In the course of investigating a murder, the novel’s main character exposes the town’s ties to America’s opioid epidemic, reveals some of the reasons that drugs have infiltrated such areas, and struggles with his own PTSD following military service. This book has been described as “an unputdownable and thrilling debut.”

Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell 
by Sy Montgomery

Hopeful and optimistic, Of Time and Turtles is an antidote to the instability of our frenzied world. Blending science, memoir, and philosophy, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.