Christopher Lee Bowen Boeken

Set in a struggling, historic women's college in New England, the narrative follows a butch Jewish PhD from Brooklyn tasked with reversing declining enrollment. Amid financial chaos, Amanda Hyde, a former au pair with a colorful past, rises to lead the Alumni Fund, navigating a web of deception that includes a mafia connection and forged documents. As she juggles her complex history and the college's dire situation, a series of unfortunate events among alumni complicate her journey, creating a darkly humorous tale of ambition and survival.

CIVIL WAR, 1861-1865, origin of today's political, economic and social conflicts and the 19th Century national transformation from farm to factory, town to city, pioneer to wage slave Bible to Darwin, honor to profit. The story of this historic pivot set in Colorado 1882. Strong characters in a vortex of political corruption, genocide, drugs (Merck, the start of big pharma, founded in 1827 to produce morphine and later cocaine; Union army purchased 10 million morphine tablets for field hospitals and more than 200,000 addicts returned home after the war), gun violence (endemic after 650,000 fratricide in the Civil War), abortion, homosexuality and abiding hope. Not to be missed!