#26 - The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett, illustrated by Inga Moore.
Not without controversy, for comments about race. Two ill-tempered and ill children find one another, and heal from the power of nature and the power of being known. The tending of a garden, of the soul, and the effect of our thoughts on our well-being and will to live.
#27 - Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Janie Crawford is raised by a former slave to be satisfied with the scraps of life, but feeling inside herself that there is more being fully alive. She's married off at 16 to an older man, Logan Killicks, who doesn't treat her poorly, but also doesn't allow for her to develop as a person. She then runs off with another man with big dreams for himself, Joe Starks, who hears of a new town being formed and sweeps in and pulls it together, becoming shopkeeper, landlord, postmaster, and mayor. But who also keeps Janie on a pedestal apart from all society, leaving her lonely and boxed in. After he dies, and she inherits their wealth, she runs off to the swamp with a much younger man, Tea Cake, to make their way through picking beans and gambling. They survive a hurricane together only to have Tea Cake succumb to rabies from a dog bite while saving Janie (a horrible way to die, and much more prevalent before widespread vaccinations in pets.) With Tea Cake, Janie came into herself, and after his funeral, she returns to her home and tells her life story to her friend Phoeby. It's unclear at the end what her fate will be (Tea Cake bit her as he died.)
It's Janie believing she can decide her fate, that there is more that she can become besides what she has been told she can be. More that her Grandma, her husbands, or society tell her she has to be. It's wanting more than merely surviving, it's believing that a full life is for her, to fully embrace what can be and what she wants.
#28 - Crimes of the Heart (Play) - Beth Henley
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