One Book One UUSG

Meets: Several times throughout the year, usually at 7pm in the Common Room. See below for exact dates.
Status: open to church members, friends, & visitors
Facilitators: UUSG Members
Contact: office@uusg.org for questions.

One Book One UUSG is a relaxed book club open to all UUSG Members and Friends that meets periodically throughout the year. Our selected books range in topics and genres. When our next book is selected it will be posted here.

Next Book and Meeting Date: Thursday, March 28, 7pm in the Common Room. Book: House of Sand and Fog.

WOW leadership is happy to announce our next One Book One UUSG Discussion Group. We will be discussing House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III.  See below for a brief description of this book. We will meet at 7:00 PM on Thursday, March 28th in the UUSG Common Room. Light snacks will be provided.

If you plan to purchase this book, we encourage you to shop at one of our local independent bookstores such as; Harvey’s Tales in Geneva or Town House Books in St. Charles.

Please RSVP to wow@uusg.org so we can plan accordingly. All are welcome.

House of Sand and Fog is a 1999 novel that was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. It follows Massoud Behrani, a former Iranian colonel who fled to America with his wife and two children after the Iranian Revolution as he yearns to restore his family’s dignity. Kathy Nicolo is a recovering addict whose husband recently left her and is struggling to hold on to the one thing she has left. Great conflict ensues as Massoud and Kathy compete for ownership of a bungalow in the Bay Area town of Corona.

Past Books:

January 2024, Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel
Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end. Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band's existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

March 2023, The Nickle Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys continues our interest in reading about the Native American traditions and history in the United States. The book is historical fiction but based on a true story “of two boys unjustly sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida." When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow delinquent Turner… As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

January 2023, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Native American women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-Black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.

October 2021, We Two Alone by Jack Wang
A young boy jeopardizes his life to play hockey in 1920s Canada. A couple is caught in Shanghai in the midst of war. An actor in New York tries to keep his career afloat while his relationship crumbles. Threaded throughout these poignant short stories is the Chinese immigrant experience, as Wang paints a picture of life in diaspora throughout time. Capturing hope, pain, and sacrifice, these stories weave a story of those who journey into the unknown.

July 2021, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
This is non-fiction, an autobiography written by an amazing young comedian. "Born a Crime" is the winner of the Thurber Prize. The compelling, inspiring, (often comic) coming-of-age story of Trevor Noah, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.

May 2021, A Place for Us by Fatima Farheed Mirza
The novel focuses on an Indian-Muslim family living in California, striving to find a balance between tradition and modernity. The family of five is left to search for home in a metaphorical and literal sense. The audience is given glimpses of the family life from their beginning to their three children later finding themselves stuck between living their own lives and the lives their parents and culture expect them to follow.

March 2021, The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s “The Dutch House,” is a story of paradise lost, dusted with fairy tale. At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

January 2021, The Humans by Matt Haig
“The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adam’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s latest novel.” Goodreads