LJDC November 2019 – Book and Movie Recommendations
This Month’s Book and Movie Recommendations

WOMAN AT WAR
Film by Benedikt Erlingsson
Halla
is a fifty-year-old independent woman. But behind the scenes of a quiet
routine, she leads a double life as a passionate environmental
activist. Known to others only by her alias “The Woman of the Mountain,”
Halla secretly wages a one-woman-war on the local aluminum industry. As
Halla’s actions grow bolder, from petty vandalism to outright
industrial sabotage, she succeeds in pausing the negotiations between
the Icelandic government and the corporation building a new aluminum
smelter. But right as she begins planning her biggest and boldest
operation yet, she receives an unexpected letter that changes
everything. Her application to adopt a child has finally been accepted
and there is a little girl waiting for her in Ukraine. As Halla prepares
to abandon her role as saboteur and savior of the Highlands to fulfill
her dream of becoming a mother, she decides to plot one final attack to
deal the aluminum industry a crippling blow.

THE WATER DANCER: A NOVEL
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
One World; First Edition edition
(September 24, 2019) 416 Pages
Young
Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away,
Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious
power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power
saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a
daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.
So
begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur
of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the
wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic
movements in the North. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war
between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family
he left behind endures.
This is the
dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men,
and children—the violent and capricious separation of families—and the
war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Written
by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer
is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those
from whom everything was stolen. A Nation Book Review