11 Down, 39 to Go: Monsters of Templeton

This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for 2-3 years.  I finally picked it up to read during my trip last week.

It’s the perfect airplane book:  interesting story, intriguing characters, and riveting enough to make me forget that a screaming baby and guy eating a bag of meat were sitting next to me!

Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff follows the main character Willie Upton as she comes home to Templeton, NY.  She is just months away from finishing her grad thesis but she had an affair with her advisor, tried to run down his wife with an airplane, and thinks she is pregnant.  And the same day she comes home, the 50-foot long body of a monster floats to the top of the town’s lake.

The novel alternates being present and past.  When Willie comes home her mother drops a bomb on her–her absent father actually isn’t absent.  He lives in Templeton but does not know that Willie is his.

Wille spends her days researching the town’s history and her family’s history to try and figure out who her father is.  Her mother’s family goes back to the founding of the town and the novel explores the stories of the town founder and all of the generations who came after him.

This was a really interesting story and I’d highly recommend this for your summer reading list.  There’s even a Madison, WI, connection with this book–author Groff studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has written three books and I’ve already added the other two to my reading list!

Next on my reading list is The End of Money.  I think I’m still on track for 50 books in 2012!