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. This Golden Age began with the publication of Lew Wallace’s Ben-Hur. It included prominent novelists such as Crawfordsville native Meredith Nicholson, Gene Stratton-Porter, and others. The book club has proven 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, Kelsey Timmerman, Ray E. Boomhower, and Kelly O’Dell Stanley.
The book club meets in our ADA-accessible Carriage House.
Copies of the books are usually available for checkout beforehand at the Carriage House. To RSVP or for more information call 765-362-5769 or email tmeeks@ben-hur.com.
2025 Book Discussions
Some Memories of a Long Life is a unique account of life before, during, and after the Civil War was written by the wife of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who played a central role in some of the most significant civil rights decisions of his era. Malvina Shanklin Harlan witnessed—and gently influenced—national history from the perspective of a political leader’s wife. Her husband, Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911), wrote the lone dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous case that endorsed separate but equal segregation. And for fifty-seven years he was married to a woman who was busy making a mental record of their eventful lives. After Justice Harlan’s death in 1911, Malvina wrote Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854–1911, as a testament to her husband’s accomplishments and to her own.
The memoir begins with Malvina, the daughter of passionate abolitionists, becoming the teenage bride of John Marshall Harlan, whose family owned more than a dozen slaves. Malvina depicts her life in antebellum Kentucky, and her courageous defense of the Harlan homestead during the Civil War. She writes of her husband’s ascent in legal circles and his eventual appointment to the Supreme Court in 1877, where he was the author of opinions that continued to influence American race relations deep into the twentieth century. Yet Some Memories is more than a wife’s account of a famous and powerful man. It chronicles the remarkable evolution of a young woman from Indiana who became a keen observer of both her family’s life and that of her nation.
This book is available to borrow at the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum’s Carriage House.
When Maurice Thompson wrote The Witchery of Archery, he filled it with various stories, many of which were humorous. However, it also gave practical advice on the sport, such as the manufacturing of archery paraphernalia and how to use the equipment while hunting. The Witchery of Archery was accredited for returning the sport of archery to public interest. Some of this was due to rifles bringing back bad memories of the American Civil War. However, the revival also served some larger, pragmatic purpose: ex-Confederate soldiers were not allowed guns, but needed hunting to survive; archery became a convenient substitution. In addition, the late 1800s saw the last of the American Indian Wars, thus romanticizing the Native Americans and their cultures, which, in most accounts, included expert archery. In 1880, with the book less than two years old, patents relating to archery items greatly increased. More than any other book, The Witchery of Archery led to the increased interest in archery for the next half-century.
This book will be available to borrow at the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum’s Carriage House.
Past Books Discussed
- Hawaii and a Revolution by Mary Hannah Krout
- The Artist, Ladoga, Indiana by Kelly O’Dell Stanley
- The Port of Missing Men by Meredith Nicholson
- Shakespeare Saved My Life by Laura Bates
- Hoosier Public Enemy: A Life of John Dillinger by John A. Beineke
- You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
- An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
- The Magic Garden – Gene Stratton-Porter
- 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 – Lew Wallace
- The Massacre at Fall Creek – Jessamyn West
- The Flying Circus – Susan Crandall
- So Cold the River – Michael Koryta
- Dune Boy – Edwin Way Teale
- An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser
- Brave Men – Ernie Pyle
- What This River Keeps – Greg Schwipps
- Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour to the Countries, Factories, and People Who Make Our Clothes – Kelsey Timmerman
- Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World – Scott Russell Sanders
- Sailing the Inland Sea: On Writing, Literature, and Land – Susan Neville
- Divided Paths, Common Ground: The Story of Mary Matthews and Lella Gaddis, Pioneering Purdue Women Who Introduced Science into the Home – Angie Klink
- A Conservationist Manifesto – Scott Russell Sanders
- Invincible, Indiana – Nate Dunlevy
- Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall – Ray Boomhower
- The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
- Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America – Linda Furiya
- Whistling Past the Graveyard – Susan Crandall
- Riverine: A Memoir From Anywhere But Here – Angela Palm
- The Life List of Adrian Mandrick – Chris White
- The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays from a Human-Centered Planet – John Green
- Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants – Robin Wall Kimmerer
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