Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

In the mid 1960s, suburban New York teenager Ron Kovic enlists in the Marines, fulfilling what he sees as his patriotic duty. During his second tour in Vietnam, he accidentally kills a fellow soldier during a retreat and later becomes permanently paralyzed in battle. Returning home to an uncaring Veterans Administration bureaucracy and to people on both sides of the political divide who don't understand what he went through, Kovic becomes an impassioned critic of the war.

DJE:  This is a powerful book about the Vietnam War, American politics, trauma, paraplegia, activism.  The writing is amazing and memorable.  It is a cry from the heart. 

Family Matters (2002)

by Rohinton Mistry
Warm, humane, tender and bittersweet are not the words one would expect to describe a novel that portrays a society where the government is corrupt, the standard of living is barely above poverty level and religious, ethnic and class divisions poison the community. Yet Mistrys compassionate eye and his ability to focus on the small decencies that maintain civilization, preserve the family unit and even lead to happiness attest to his masterly skill as a writer who makes sense of the world by using laughter, as one of his characters observes. Bombay in the mid-1990s, a once-elegant city in the process of deterioration, is mirrored in the physical situation of elderly retired professor Nariman Vakeel, whose body is succumbing to the progressive debilitation of Parkinsons disease. Narimans apartment, which he shares with his two resentful, middle-aged stepchildren, is also in terrible disrepair. But when an accident forces him to recuperate in the tortuously crowded apartment that barely accommodates his daughter Roxana, her husband and two young boys, family tensions are exacerbated and the limits of responsibility and obligation are explored with a full measure of anguish. In the ensuing situation, everyones behavior deteriorates, and the affecting secret of Narimans thwarted lifetime love affair provides a haunting leitmotif. Light moments of domestic interaction, a series of ridiculous comic situations, ironic juxtapositions and tenderly observed human eccentricities provide humorous relief, as the author of A Fine Balance again explores the tightrope act that constitutes life on this planet. Mistry is not just a fiction writer; he's a philosopher who finds meaning-indeed, perhaps a divine plan in small human interactions. This beautifully paced, elegantly expressed novel is notable for the breadth of its vision as well as its immensely appealing characters and enticing plot.  (from Amazon)

DJE:  I loved this book.  It hearkens back to King Lear.  An old man and his daughters.  Family Matters is a commentary on ageing in society and it shows how things are not that different in India than the U.S.  It's also an introduction to the Parsi community in India (a small but influential group).

Life As We Know It (1996)

Berube and Jamie (2014)

by Michael Berube
When Michael Berube's second son Jamie was born with Down syndrome, life as he had known it was gone. Suddenly abstract questions the successful academic and author had been too busy to think about were thrust before him. Berube tells how he and his wife came to know this astonishing new person as their son, an individual like their other son and yet who, to the world, was not an individual but the syndrome itself. Berube intersperses the story of Jamie's development with a critical analysis of society's response to disability, the inadequacies of American health care, and a discussion of such issues as eugenics and the priority society gives to budgeting for the disabled.