All are welcome to attend the Reading on the Avenue Book Club, which meets in the Community Room of Willow Glen Library. On Wednesday, May 23, we'll be discussing The Book of Salt by Monique Truong.

The Book of Salt serves up a wholly original take on Paris in the 1930s through the eyes of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by poet Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas. In a mesmerizing tale of yearning and betrayal, Monique Truong explores Paris from the salons of its artists to the dark nightlife of its outsiders and exiles. She takes us back to Binh's youthful servitude in Saigon under colonial rule, to his life as a galley hand at sea, to his brief, fateful encounters in Paris with Paul Robeson and the young Ho Chi Minh.