When the weather doesn’t want to play by the rules and it’s forty degrees and constantly pouring, or it looks fine outside but you just can’t bring yourself to change out of pajamas to go outside, Ooligan Press has you covered. We’ve got books that will take you to another place or even another time.
Extreme Vetting by Roxana Arama
In Extreme Vetting the stories of defense attorney Laura Holban, her client Emilio, and Emilio’s family bring us to Washington state. We visit courthouses, Pike Place Market, of course, and Pioneer Square. We get blanketed by snow and the effect of the judicial system on the lives of a cast made of people with wide-ranging international backgrounds and ages, interacting with the courts from different ends and from different circumstances. Extreme Vetting is very much a thriller, so this suggestion does a little more than transport us outside.
Elephant Speak: A Devoted Keeper’s Life Among the Herd By Melissa Crandall
How long has it been since you treated yourself to a day at the zoo? Well, Elephant Speak gives us a look into the thirty-year career of Roger Henneous with the Oregon Zoo and his conservation efforts and with elephants deservedly in the spotlight. The journey from behind the glass looking into the enclosures to the elephant stables and the keeper alley gives zoo fans a feel for the behind-the-scenes workings of the zoo they’ve always been curious about from a perspective that zoo fans will relate with.
A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845 by Linda Crew
Maybe you’ve played Oregon Trail; maybe you know your history. Even, or possibly especially, if one of those is true of you, A Heart for Any Fate has something meaningful to add to all of our understanding of the journey the pioneers undertook. A Heart for Any Fate is a work of historical fiction that draws inspiration from the real accounts of pioneers who undertook the trek to Oregon in 1845. With an array of photographs and a rich historical record to draw from, A Heart for Any Fate is as real a portrayal of traveling the Oregon Trail as anyone can expect. Readers will have to resist the pull back in time while reading this novel.
A Family, Maybe by Lane Igoudin
A Family, Maybe is the tale of two fathers traversing the Foster-to-Adopt process in California during the passage of legislation and court rulings prohibiting adoption by same sex couples. Amid the supervised visits and court hearings, a deepening bond forms between Lane and Jonathan, the prospective fathers in question, and the children they are fighting to adopt. We visit Big Bear Lake; Lane and Jonathan invite us into their home; we attend a Pride Parade in Long Beach and take a trip to Downtown LA. Palm trees and sand are the backdrop for this tale of struggling against tremendous forces to form and keep a family together.
Written by Thomas Hernandez.