All Iowa Reads Committee Offers Titles for Book Discussions

Bryan, Patricia and Thomas Wolf.  Midnight Assassin: a murder in America’s heartland.  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005.
     This non-fiction work reconstructs a 1900 ax murder, investigation, and trial in rural Iowa.  A farmer was killed while asleep beside his wife who was tried for her husband’s murder.  The coverage of the murder and trial by a young journalist, Susan Glaspell, is also explored in this riveting who-done-it.  There is a wealth of additional information on a website devoted to the book as well as a short film based on Glaspell’s short story and play inspired by the incident.
http://www.midnightassassin.com/

Egan, Timothy.  The Worst Hard Time: the untold story of those who survived the great American dust bowl.  Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006.
     Timothy Egan won a Pulitzer Prize for this story of the families who stayed behind and suffered through the United States’ worst ecological disaster – the 1930’s Dust Bowl in the southern plains.  Interest in the history and ecology of the Dust Bowl has been sparked recently by Egan’s book as well as a parallel PBS American Experience documentary (now on DVD) “Surviving the Dust Bowl” and the 25th anniversary edition of Donald Worster’s classic history, Dust Bowl: the southern plains in the 1930’s.
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=688507

Hoover, Dwight W.  A Good Day’s Work: an Iowa farm in the Great Depression.  Ivan R. Dee, 2007.     
     A Good Day’s Work, like Little Heathens, is a memoir of growing up in rural Iowa in the Great Depression.  In a good day’s work, however, the emphasis is on field and barn work as well as the economics and management of a typical Iowa farm.  Hoover recounts the hard work, isolation, and cooperation between members of his extended family that kept the farming enterprise viable.  Also described are the changes in agriculture that led eventually to the demise of the “old timey” family farm.
http://www.bsu.edu/history/profile/0,1966,8337-1277-199331,00.html

Kalish, Mildred Armstrong.  Little Heathens: hard times and high spirits on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression.  Bantam Books, 2007.
     Many memoirs of farm life in the “good old days” have been written but few with the skill and penance of Little Heathens.  Mildred Kalish shares her family’s history and a wealth of anecdotes, recipes, and how-to-do-it information in this upbeat recollection of life in rural Iowa in the 1930’s.
http://www.little-heathens.com/

Kooser, Ted.  Local Wonders: seasons in the Bohemian Alps.  University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
     In this book of essays, Ted Kooser – past poet laureate of the United States – describes the rolling hills of his home in southeastern Nebraska (the “alps” of the title), shares memories of his Iowa childhood and reflects upon what makes human life meaningful.  Readers will enjoy exploring the essay format and find themselves looking more carefully at the people and the natural world around them.
http://www.tedkooser.com/about.html

 
Laskin, David.  The Children’s Blizzard.  HarperCollins, 2004.     
     The Children’s Blizzard reads like a novel and we watch, in horror, as the famous snowstorm of January 1888 leaves schoolchildren stranded, dead, and miraculously saved on their way home from school.  Laskin centers in on five Great Plains pioneer families in this gripping account.  He also describes the history, politics, and failure of the Army Signal Corps which provided a rudimentary weather service at the time.
http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/25085/David_Laskin/index.aspx

Marquart, Debra K.  The Horizontal World: growing up wild in the middle of nowhere.  Counterpoint, 2006.
     Marquart, a professor of  English at Iowa State University, was born in North Dakota in 1956.  This memoir is a coming to terms with a girlhood spent on her family’s dairy farm filled with hard work, isolation and cultural constraints.  Although she does not regret leaving the home place -- indelibly etched in the reader’s mind as described in the car’s rear view mirror as Marquart leaves it behind, Marquart acknowledges and explores the bond we all have with the place of our birth.
http://www.debramarquart.com/

 
Perry, Michael.  Truck: a love story.  Harper Collins, 2006.     
     Truck is a book about life, love, and gardening in the upper Midwest by Wisconsin author and volunteer firefighter Michael Perry.  The truck of the title is a vintage International Harvester that Perry is restoring with the help of his "motorhead" brother-in-law.  The restoration of the truck and the progress of Perry’s love relationship provide a framework for this readable memoir.  Perry’s earlier book, also about small town life, Population 485 would also be a sure bet for Iowa readers.
http://www.sneezingcow.com/

 
Trask, Kerry A.  Black Hawk: the battle for the heart of America.  Henry Holt, 2006.
     All Iowans should be versed in the history of the 1832 Black Hawk War, prompted when Chief Black Hawk and his band of Sauk and Fox Indians crossed the Mississippi into their homelands in Illinois from their exile in what is now Iowa. Trask uses the Black Hawk War as a way to look at the perspectives and relationship between Indians and Whites in frontier America as well as the disconnect between ideals of freedom and integrity, and the thirst for more land.
http://www.henryholt.com/searchnn.htm

Weaver, Will.  Sweet Land: new and selected stories.  Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2006.
     Minnesota author Will Weaver grounds this collection of twelve short stories in the rural Midwest.  The stories are funny, sad, and insightful, presenting a clear-eyed picture of how farm culture is changing along with a poignant reminder of what we have lost.  One of the stories in this collection, “A Gravestone Made of Wheat,” was made into a critically acclaimed feature-length film “Sweet Land,” now available in DVD.
http://www.willweaverbooks.com