The Hoosier Authors Book Club began as part of our Indiana State Bicentennial programming for 2016. The Museum’s 2016 exhibit discussed the Golden Age of Indiana Literature, which began with the publication of Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur and went on to include prominent novelists such as Crawfordsville native Meredith Nicholson, Gene Stratton-Porter, and others. The program proved to be popular, so it has been extended.
Over the years the book club has hosted discussions with some of the authors, including Susan Crandall and Kelsey Timmerman. This will continue in 2020 when author Ray E. Boomhower attends the March discussion of his biography of suffragist May Wright Sewall.
The book club meets in the ADA-accessible Carriage House. Copies of the books are often available for checkout beforehand at the Carriage House. Book club participation is free and open to the public, but space is limited. To RSVP or for more information call 765-362-5769 or email [email protected].
2019 book discussions
Here is a list of the books we will discuss and the month we will read them.
October 10, 2019 at 7 p.m. – Follow the River by James Alexander Thom
2020 book discussions
Dates have not been chosen for all of these discussions, but here is a list of the books we will discuss and the month we will read them. More books will be added as they are selected.
Monday, March 23, 2020 – 6:30 pm – Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall by Ray E. Boomhower – This will be a joint book club with the League of Women Voters’ “Well-Read Citizen” Discussion Group. We will meet at the Crawfordsville District Public Library to accommodate a larger group. As a tie in to our 2020 exhibit about David and Zerelda Wallace, we will be discussing Woman Suffrage and the 100th anniversary of women achieving the right to vote.
Thursday, June 4, 2020 – 7 pm – Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America by Linda Furiya
Thursday, July 9, 2020 – 7 pm – Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall
Thursday, September 24, 2020 – 7 pm – Sailing the Inland Sea by Susan Neville
Past books discussed
- The Magnificent Ambersons – Booth Tarkington
- The House of a Thousand Candles – Meredith Nicholson
- The Hoosier School-Master – Edward Eggleston
- Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
- Prince of Graustark – George B. McCutcheon
- The Storied Sea – Susan E. Wallace
- Alice of Old Vincennes – Maurice Thompson
- The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
- A Girl of the Limberlost – Gene Stratton-Porter
- The Friendly Persuasion – Jessamyn West
- God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
- On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker – A’Lelia Bundles
- Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace
- The Massacre at Fall Creek by Jessamyn West
- The Flying Circus by Susan Crandall
- So Cold the River by Michael Koryta
- Dune Boy by Edwin Way Teale
- An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
- Brave Men by Ernie Pyle
- What This River Keeps by Greg Schwipps
- Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People Who Make Our Clothes by Kelsey Timmerman
- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World by Scott Russell Sanders
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