When Libraries Show Their Love for Local Writers

I went at least three or four times a week [to the 135th Street branch of NYPL] and I read everything there. I mean, every single book in that library. In some blind and instinctive way, I knew that what was happening in those books was also happening all around me. And I was trying to make a connection between those books and the life I saw and the life I lived. – James Baldwin

There are around 150 titles in the Book Club Resource by Colorado authors spanning more or less every genre. Below these introductory paragraphs is a selection of just a few recent additions to the collection. I wish I could include all the fascinating titles to choose from, but that would make for a very long post, so be sure to check out the catalog.

It’s safe to say that most library workers love stories and are interested in storytelling. Many authors enjoy being invited to book clubs or speaking events, and there are lots of ways to plan an event with a Colorado author:

We have a growing table of Colorado authors who are open to appearing at library events (most have sets in the Book Club Resource).
We have a dedicated listserv made up of Colorado authors and library workers where either party can promote opportunities for engagement. This mailing list has almost 200 members across the state. Join Colorado Authors & Libraries Connect (CALC) today!
The Colorado Authors League has a Speakers’ Bureau.
Colorado Humanities/Colorado Center for the Book also has an Author Talks page.

A Win-Win-Win

I believe that libraries and writers have much work to do together, and one clear way for them to unify is through the humble book club. Writers like to talk about their work (not every writer, of course) and readers like to hear insights from writers. It’s a win-win. When you factor libraries into that equation, it’s a win-win-win!

Afterall, libraries and writers are a natural partnership, one that can be equally beneficial. Let’s remember, libraries would be nothing without writers. And libraries are not driven by market forces in deciding which books are displayed.

Libraries can benefit from the allyship of writers. Writers’ eloquence and organization can remind us of how the library is an invaluable cultural touchstone that must be protected. But, more than that, the presence of creatives within the library reminds users that it is a living, creative place, not just shelves of books.

Writers benefit from being represented in library collections. Each book creates a record that is usable by other libraries. For many readers, the library is THE place to make new discoveries, and that leads to actual sales. According to a Library Journal study, “over 50% of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library.”

Libraries can further support their local authors by, for example, welcoming them for events such as speaker panels, organizing and promoting locally themed book clubs, and hosting opportunities for writers to workshop, gather, and share wisdom. At the end of this article, you will find links to articles on the author-library relationship.

Try one of these for your book club!

Reading Colorado: A Literary Road Guide, by Peter Anderson

Reading Colorado, a high-octane road trip through the diverse literary landscapes of the Centennial State, gathers narratives of exploration, stories from the mining and agricultural frontiers, urban tales reflecting the emergence and growth of Denver and the Front Range, and a diverse range of contemporary voices, from the Plains to the Peaks, who invite readers into their home territory. The travel guide format is perfect for exploring Colorado in a hammock strung between some aspens, on the couch with your feet kicked up by the fire, or by hitting the road with your favorite traveling companion. This guide includes many writers not yet anthologized as well as others who have become household names and its place-based focus makes it easy to zoom in on literature that features your favorite locations. It will deepen the map, enhancing road trips for residents, visitors, and armchair travelers alike.

Go as a River, by Shelley Read

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family’s peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado—the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known. She flees into the surrounding mountains where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring. As the seasons change, she also charts the changes in herself, finding in the beautiful but harsh landscape the meaning and strength to move forward and rebuild all that she has lost, even as the Gunnison River threatens to submerge her homeland—its ranches, farms, and the beloved peach orchard that has been in her family for generations. Inspired by true events surrounding the destruction of the town of Iola in the 1960s, Go as a River is a story of deeply held love in the face of hardship and loss, but also of finding courage, resilience, friendship, and, finally, home—where least expected.

Raven Woods: Smoke Signals, by Denise Gard

Iona and Audrey emit smoke signals when they need help, but sometimes it takes more than water to put them out. Iona thought she would sip mimosas while relaxing on a beach in retirement, but instead she suffers from loneliness as vacation brochures collect dust. Even worse, she feels forgotten by her daughter. Iona’s daughter, Audrey, serially dates emotionally scarred men and buries herself in work to avoid the pain of rejection. Audrey feels like an abject failure when it comes to relationships. The relationship dynamic between the two shifts when a disastrous fire threatens Iona’s home. Audrey’s longing for motherhood is funneled into caring for Iona. Iona courageously joins the Senior Center where she meets Maxine who sells fresh eggs at farmer’s markets by day and hosts parties at night. As the relationship between Audrey and Iona disintegrates like burning wood, they discover that living with each other in adulthood presents numerous challenges and adaptations. One thing’s for sure, they’ll need to get better at putting out fires.

Bluebird Seasons: Witnessing Climate Change in My Piece of the Wild, by Mary Taylor Young

Climate change wasn’t on the public’s radar in 1995, when Mary Taylor Young and her husband bought their piece of the wild in the Colorado Rockies. They built a cabin, set up a trail of bluebird nest boxes, and began a nature journal of observations.

Her twenty-five year journal, she realized, was a record of climate change, happening not on an Antarctic ice sheet but in their own natural neighborhood and echoed in everyone’s backyard.

Jolt, by Jodi Bowersox

When the summit of Pikes Peak is beset with a summer storm, Lalita Torres thinks the embarrassment of trading her shorts and tank top for a touristy union suit to keep warm is the worst that could happen.

She was wrong. A lightning strike sends her back a hundred and twenty-three years and into the care of Dr. Tate Cavanaugh. Lalita thinks she’s in a reality show. Tate thinks she’s lost her mind.

Louise and Vincent, by Diane Byington

French innkeeper Louise Ravoux is struggling to keep her inn afloat while raising her two daughters and avoiding her abusive husband. One afternoon, a scruffy redheaded painter walks in, wanting to rent a room. Vincent van Gogh reminds her of her first love, and he has the most arresting eyes of anyone she’s ever seen. Though attracted to Vincent, Louise still bears the scars her husband gave her the only time she flirted with a man during their marriage. Still, something about Vincent makes her feel alive, and when she sees him painting outside, she stops to admire his work. Louise gathers her courage and asks Vincent to give her painting lessons, and he agrees. She soon realizes that art and this man are calling her to change her life. Because of her husband’s temper and propensity for violence, Louise walks a dangerous path, but she’s determined to do whatever it takes to find a meaningful life and experience love. Both a love story and a chronicle of a woman’s awakening, Louise and Vincent richly portrays the last months of one of the most iconic artists in history.

Minimum Safe Distance, by X. Ho Yen

With the Earth teetering on recovery from humanity’s 21st century mistakes, two highly advanced aliens observing from the Moon are suddenly on opposite sides of an ethical battle over a dire cosmic threat. As governments seek to destroy them, the aliens wrestle and scheme, entangling all of humanity as they influence and empower specific humans to achieve their contrary objectives. Among them are a brilliant AI expert who has channeled her autism in the service of science, and a violent, anti-secular zealot who hates everything she stands for. Drawn into the conflict, Laurence and Matt must reach minimum safe distance from human nature itself – their own, the rest of humanity’s, and of the former-human, techno-demon ‘monstas’. Chased into the ruins of the US, they struggle to distill the meaning of personhood, discover the value of their own lives, and in so doing decide the fate of the solar system.

Gangbuster: One Man’s Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan, by Alan Prendergast

As gripping as it is prescient, Gangbuster is the first-ever history of the battle waged by one rookie District Attorney, Philip Van Cise, against the KKK, organized crime, and government corruption at the highest levels throughout the 1920s. One century later, in the face of contemporary society’s divisiveness and fearmongering politics, the personal courage of this maverick’s battle against underworld figures and a mainstream white supremacist movement is more relevant and inspiring than ever.

What Flies Want: Poems, by Emily Pérez

Book cover of What flies Want: Poems by Emily Perez

In What Flies Want, disaster looms in domesticity: a family grapples with its members’ mental health, a marriage falters, and a child experiments with self-harm. With its backdrop of school lockdown drills, #MeToo, and increasing political polarization, the collection asks how these private and public tensions are interconnected. The speaker, who grew up in a bi-cultural family on the US/Mexico border, once felt she “need[ed] nothing but my own fine fire.” She soon learns she must play a role in a culture that prizes whiteness, patriarchy, and chauvinism. As an adult she oscillates between performed confidence–“skating by in my glittery skirt, waving”–and performed obedience–“I supplicant, compliant / I reliable client.” As a wife, she bristles against the expectations of emotional labor. As a mother, she attempts to direct her white male children away from the toxic power they are positioned to inherit, only to find how deeply she is also implicated in these systems. Tangled in a family history of depression, a society fixated on guns, a rocky relationship, and her own desire to ignore and deny the problems she must face, this is a speaker who is by turns defiant, defeated, self-implicating, and hopeful. In poems both subtly and overtly musical, Emily Pérez’s second collection asks if we can escape the quiet violence that seeps through our everyday lives.

Been Outside: Adventures of Black Women, Nonbinary, and Gender Nonconforming People in Nature, Edited by Amber Wendler and Shaz Zamore; foreword by Carolyn Finney

Book cover of Been Outside -Adventures of Black Women, Nonbinary, and Gender Nonconforming People in Nature, Edited by Amber Wendler and Shaz Zamore; foreword by Carolyn Finney

Encompassing identity, inspiration, ancestry, community, and stewardship, the essays and poems by leading Black women and nonbinary scientists and explorers in Been Outside delve into how experiences in the natural world and life sciences shape the self. These writers and researchers contemplate the moments that sparked their love of nature, as well as the ways time in the field and outdoor adventures have enhanced or expanded their perspective about what is possible.

The Tie That Binds, by Kent Haruf

Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself. Here, Kent Haruf delivers the sweeping tale of a woman of the American High Plains, as told by her neighbor, Sanders Roscoe. As Roscoe shares what he knows, Edith’s tragedies unfold: a childhood of pre-dawn chores, a mother’s death, a violence that leaves a father dependent on his children, forever enraged. Here is the story of a woman who sacrifices her happiness in the name of family–and then, in one gesture, reclaims her freedom.

As Joan Approaches Infinity, by Kikia Dorsey

As Joan Approaches Infinity is a dark comedy about a middle-aged woman and pivotal moments that spiral from the main character’s ecstasy and despair. She is married to her college sweetheart and has two children. A mother, adjunct instructor, and woman with a mission, Joan approaches her life with childlike determination to change her world and her community. While her growth spirals, she ends up in the same place again and again in the tumultuous waves of her existence. Spiral in form, the novel and Joan grow through repetition and the longing toward something new and the certainty of her love. This is a raucous ride through the mind of a flawed but lovable character and a testament to the challenges of women in a late-stage-capitalist America.

At First Light, by Barbara Nickless

Ritual murder. Archaic clues. A visionary killer. In this heart-stopping novel by the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Sydney Rose Parnell series, words can kill.

On the muddy banks of the Calumet River, a body has been found posed next to a series of mysterious glyphs and bearing wounds from a ritualistic slaying. Chicago detective Addie Bisset knows only one man who can decipher the message left by the killer: her friend Dr. Evan Wilding. A brilliant forensic semiotician, Evan decodes the etchings as Viking Age runes. They suggest either human sacrifice or righteous punishment. But to what god? And for what sins?

Only one thing is clear from the disturbing runic riddles: there are more victims to come.

As Evan races to determine the identity of the Viking Poet, he and Addie uncover the killer’s most terrifying secret yet: the motive. This startling discovery puts Evan’s life in mortal danger, and verse by ancient verse, time is running out.

Hound Dogged, by Rebecca Hendricks

In the vibrant year of 1958, a time when Rock & Roll pulsated through teenage hearts, five friends found harmony in chaos, forming The Hound Dog As societal forces clash and cultural upheaval takes center stage, John, Stu, Jerry, Patrick, and the talented newcomer Danny embark on a musical journey in the throes of a changing world.

Beneath the surface of their carefree strumming sessions in Stu’s mom’s basement, ambitions stir within the band. Doubts arise, and the camaraderie is tested as the members question each other’s motives, wondering if they can collectively reach the pinnacle of Rock & Roll stardom.

Tensions escalate, propelling The Hound Dogs toward an unexpected gig before a sizable audience, a challenge they are ill-prepared to face. Faced with the looming prospect of failure on stage, a talented newcomer, Danny Bruer, joins in and helps to save the day. However, Danny is preparing to audition for The Dice, a major band with a colossal ego, and they’re determined to acquire something The Hound Dogs possess, whatever the cost.

As The Hound Dogs and The Dice stand on the brink of a musical clash, will the echoes of 1958 reverberate with the triumph of friendship and a love for music, or will the pursuit of fame lead to a dissonance that threatens to drown out the harmonies they once shared?

The Palisades, by Gail Lynn Hanson

Dorothy Fiske, eighty-three, adores movie stars, jewelry, murder mysteries, and men. At twenty-five, inspired by Judy Garland and Angela Lansbury, she moved to Los Angeles from a religiously strict Midwestern home. Despite the glamour, Dorothy, heartbroken, was childless. She blamed her sweet, unambitious husband, Eugene, claiming his sperm was weak, but Dorothy knows the truth. Ruth, a sixty-six-year-old home health aide, fears eviction from her LA apartment due to her unusual, antisocial behavior. Previously fired from a nursing facility for residents dying under her care, Ruth targets Dorothy, a widow from a wealthy family in Pacific Palisades, California. Lonely yet prideful, Dorothy hires Ruth as a “lady’s maid.” Ruth accepts the position and masterfully entwines herself into Dorothy’s life because she wants to live in Dorothy’s house, alone. The Palisades is a deliciously spun psychological suspense brimming with dark humor in which two women develop a peculiar relationship amid a miasma of Ruth’s disturbing memories and Dorothy’s pervasive delusions of old Hollywood. Poverty and privilege mingle, companionship turns bizarre, and identity is questioned as the women desperately try to fulfill their shared yearning for motherhood.

Colorado Phantasmagorias: A Mashup of Biography, Fantasy, and Travel Guide, by Joan Jacobson

A phantastical history of the state as seen through the legacies of 14 influential Coloradans: These quirky biographies will have you thwacking your head, asking, “How have I never heard about this before?”
You’ll meet:
•Two Aspen ladies who created an international sensation when they eloped to marry each other – in 1889,
•A developer who wanted to populate Red Rocks Park with life-size dinosaur carvings,
•A hippie pastor and 19 disabled people who shut down Colfax and Broadway in 1978,
•The circus star who made Colorado a ski state,
•And more!
This magical mix of truth and time travel will inspire you to go out and explore the places where it all happened. And show you how and where.
“Joan Jacobson’s entertaining and insightful book is an imaginative linking of past to present. She brings these key Coloradans back to life in a way typical nonfiction can’t.” Tom “Dr. Colorado” Noel, Professor of History, CU-Denver
“Spunky, witty, and practical.” Dr. Marcia Goldstein, Denver Woman’s Press Club
“What a great read, a celebration of Colorado’s diverse heroes.” Max Tyler, Colorado State Representative (retired)
Included: Felipe Baca, Chipeta, John Brisben Walker, Golda Meir, Margaret “Molly” Brown, Ralph Carr, Wade Blank, Barney Ford, Ora Chatfield & Clara Dietrich, Adolph Coors, Carl Howelsen, Florence Sabin, Stanley Biber, John Denver.

Resources

About the Collection

Book club sets are circulated to participating libraries via the CLiC courier. If you are interested in receiving book club sets but are not already a member library, use the online form to get signed up. Since the BCR has always relied on book donations, we are deeply grateful for all the books we have received, especially to all of the authors, libraries, publishers, and individuals that have donated sets and helped make the collection stronger. Please contact bookclub@coloradovirtuallibrary.org for questions or to discuss donations. We also welcome all suggestions of titles to include in the collection.

NOTE: The above book descriptions are adapted from library records or Amazon.