Jay Strafford's 10 favorite books of 2010

Fiction

One of America's most talented novelists, Gail Godwin, typically draws on her life for her fiction, and the result is often powerful and moving.

In "Unfinished Desires" (416 pages, Random House, $26), Godwin combines the sacred and the secular in a story about a Catholic girls school in Asheville, N.C.

It's a story of friendship and forgiveness. With humanity, understated prose, a generous dose of the sardonic, and a firmament of faith, one of America's premier novelists adds to her celebrated body of work.

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To begin a novel with a calamity and turn it into a lesson in hope is tricky business, but Virginia native Sandra Dallas accomplishes the feat with tenderness in "Whiter Than Snow" (304 pages, St. Martin's Press, $24.99).

Set in a small Colorado mining town in 1920, Dallas' latest novel tells of an avalanche that buries nine children. Only four survive. A deft storyteller, Dallas slowly reveals family secrets and the identities of the dead and the living. It is moving but never manipulative.

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A cast of English eccentrics is a beloved staple of fiction, and Julia Stuart makes the most of hers in "The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise" (320 pages, Doubleday, $24.95).

The Tower of London and those who live and work there are Stuart's subjects, and her plot centers in particular on Balthazar and Hebe Jones, whose young son has recently died. There's tragedy, but there's a wealth of comedy, too, including the lecherous Ravenmaster and a 181-year-old tortoise named Mrs. Cook.

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The end of an appealing trilogy is cause for rejoicing and regret, but Joseph Caldwell brings his to a triumphant conclusion in "The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven" (248 pages, Delphinium, $23.99 hardcover, $13.99 softcover).

The final installment wraps up the stories that Caldwell began in "The Pig Did It" and continued in "The Pig Comes to Dinner." His finale is as funny and as touching as its predecessors, as long-held secrets are revealed and wrongs are righted (somewhat).

Written with wit and imagination, and filled with a cast of charming if occasionally annoying oddballs, "The Pig Goes to Hog Heaven" is a fitting end.

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Without the leavening effect of kindness, comedy can be cruel. But no one can accuse actress/author Fannie Flagg of that sin, and "I Still Dream About You" (336 pages, Random House, $26) is a model of warmth and humor.

As the novel opens in the autumn of 2008, Birmingham real estate agent and former Miss Alabama Maggie Fortenberry is 60, depressed, filled with regrets and planning to commit suicide. Events, however, keep intervening.

Flagg, known for her well-drawn characters, fills these pages with Maggie and her friends and co-workers, and the result is a winning tale.

Nonfiction

Possessions — particularly those that have come down through generations — can bind us to — and in — the past. As Lexington author Lisa Tracy writes, "We can, in fact, never be free of our stuff until we have dealt with the stories it carries. In the end, it does indeed tell us something about who we are. It's just stuff, our possessions. Family furniture. And it's what we make of it."

"Objects of Our Affection: Uncovering My Family's Past, One Chair, Pistol, and Pickle Fork at a Time" (250 pages, Bantam, $26) is Tracy's account of inheriting, with her sister, her parents' home in Lexington — and a wealth of antiques, curiosities and family papers.

Her story succeeds on many levels and will delight "Antiques Roadshow" fans, military-history buffs and family-memoir lovers.

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Family treasures are fine, but perhaps the greatest are the thoughts of those who have gone before.

Pithy, funny, wise and odd ones are the subject of "Aunt Epp's Guide for Life: Miscellaneous Musings of a Victorian Lady" (192 pages, Atria, $18), the musings of the late Elspeth Marr, collected and edited by her great-great-nephew, Christopher Rush.

Marr was born in 1871 and died in 1947, having lived much of her life in St. Monans, a small Scottish fishing village. This slim but potent collection includes her thoughts on such topics as adultery, atheism, conversation, diaries, golfers, music, prayer, singing, toads and wealth.

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The oft-told tale of George Armstrong Custer — hero and joke — finds a new interpretation — and a far more nuanced one — in historian Nathaniel Philbrick's "The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn" (466 pages, Viking, $30).

In his sweeping and addictively readable book, eminent Philbrick argues persuasively that the last stand was as much Sitting Bull's as Custer's and that Sitting Bull's victory at Little Bighorn sowed the seeds of his ultimate defeat.

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President Harry S. Truman's famous advice that "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog" is proved wrong in "Affection and Trust: The Personal Correspondence of Harry S. Truman and Dean Acheson, 1953-1971" (384 pages, Knopf, $30).

Acheson was Truman's second-term secretary of state, and the men shared a long and valuable friendship, recounted here in the letters covering the period from when Truman left office until Acheson died.

Editors Raymond Geselbracht, a Truman scholar, and David C. Acheson, Dean Acheson's son, allow the reader to see the Truman-Acheson bonds in their own words and get an insider's glimpse at history.

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Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis declined to write an autobiography. But in "Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography In Books" (368 pages, Random House, $27.95), historian and biographer William Kuhn describes in fascinating detail the final third of Jackie's life — her career in publishing — and argues persuasively that the books she edited or helped bring to publication shed light on her inner life.

"Her books were inextricably bound up with who she was, how she reflected on her past, and who she aspired to be," Kuhn writes. "They are the prism-like reflections of the persistent passions of a woman with a beautiful mind."

jstrafford@timesdispatch.com

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