2026 April - Prodigal Summer

 

"She loved the air after a hard rain, and the way a forest of dripping leaves fills itself with a sibilant percussion that empties your head of words."

Prodigal Summer

Barbara Kingsolver (2000)

Wednesday, April 15, 1pm

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by  a young hunter. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa, a bookish city girl turned farmer’s wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about the complexities of a world neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.

**See content warnings at bottom of this post. 

 Resources:

• Author's website

• A resource page from a NY library (I am not going to reinvent the wheel, this page is all you need)

**Content warnings: Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty and death, Bullying, Cancer, Cursing, Death of Spouse, Grief, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Sexual Content, Transphobia

2026 March - Hell of a Book

 

At some point, a person has to be seen.

Hell of a Book

Jason Mott (2021)

Wednesday, March 18, 1pm

In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That story is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. 

As the characters’ stories build and build, they converge, and they astonish. This heartbreaking and magical book is about family, love of parents and children, art, and money. It is also, throughout, a tragic story of a police shooting that plays over and over on the news, and a reckoning of what it can mean to be Black in America.

An astounding work of fiction from New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.
 

**See content warnings at bottom of this post. 

 Resources:

• Author's homepage
• Author's older page for his poetry 
• Discussion questions (from the publisher)
• Interview with the author (after is more recent novel) from the Decatur Book Festival, I recommend starting at 30 minutes into the interview, and then do the first 30 if you have more time.
• An NPR interview with Mott

**Content warnings: death, violence, racism, mental illness and depression, police brutality, alcoholism,  racism, gun violence, child death, parent death, bullying

Feb 2026 Homeseeking

 

Homeseeking

Karissa Chen (2025)

Wednesday, February 18, 1pm

Haiwen is buying bananas at a supermarket in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back. Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

**Click here to see content warnings. 

 Resources:

• Author's homepage (including a PDF download reader's guide with discussion questions)
• Another reader's guide/discussion questions 

To augment your reading:

• Chen created a playlist for Haiwen and Suchi on YouTube.  
• Photographs from 1947-49 Shanghai by Life Magazine photographer, Jack Birns