Books: An Essential Ingredient

Join us for and online discussion of Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep, a tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house during the summer of 1961.

With her mother dead and her brothers off living their own lives, Isabel lives alone in a large, rambling house in the Dutch countryside. A solitary soul and an outsider, she feels herself inextricably linked to the house and its memories of her mother. She spends her days obsessively ordering the house, making sure everything is where it belongs.

Her tightly-controlled existence is upended when her brother Louis brings his latest girlfriend, Eva, to stay with her while he goes to work abroad. Isabel is deeply irritated—enraged even—by this invasion of her space. But as irritability turns to something else, Eva’s presence brings a whole new side of Isabel to light, in more ways than one.

Book length: 272 pages

Join us for an in-person conversation about The Many Lives of Mama Love, Lara Love Hardin's harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir recounting her slide from suburban mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot caller, and then her unlikely comeback as a successful ghostwriter.

A wealthy soccer mom, little league coach, and school board member, Lara became a Vicodin and heroin addict who funded her addiction by stealing credit cards and ID numbers from unlocked cars or from neighbors. After getting caught and convicted as a felon, she spent a year in jail, where she brought friendship and healing to other inmates, earning her the nickname “Mama Love.” As a recovering addict, Lara helped other addicts and former inmates. She gradually rebuilt her life, becoming a best-selling writer and becoming reunited with her children.

Book length: 320 pages

Join us for an online conversation about True Grit, Charles Portis' celebrated 1968 novel of danger and adventure in the Old West.

True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is only fourteen when the coward Tom Chaney shoots her father in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash. While stubbornly determined to avenge her father, Mattie is smart enough to know she can't go after a violent killer all by herself. With tenacity and some fast-talking, she manages to hire mean-tempered, one-eyed US Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn to accompany her into Indian Territory to track down the despicable outlaw and see him hanged.

Along the way they meet a vain, good-looking Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf, who persuades Rooster to abandon Mattie and team up with him to capture Chaney alive and collect the bounty for a different murder he committed in Texas. But the two lawmen have seriously underestimated the smart, tenacious teenager!

Not just a classic Western, True Grit is an undeniable classic of American literature as quirky, original, and unflinching as Mattie Ross herself.

Book length: 240 pages