The book club selects books once per year from nominations suggested by the participants. The club alternates between fiction and non-fiction, published within the last two years. Our meetings are now Zoom only. Any U of M Alumni or significant others who would like to participate can contact us and they will be provided with the Zoom link.
Selections for the upcoming year:
August 7 2024 at 6:30 pm: The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger
Since it will still be summer and it’s nice to enjoy the outdoors, we will have this meeting at Oak Hill Park, 3201 Rhode Island Ave, St. Louis Park. This is a park which has been used by the club for other events.
The latest novel by Minnesotan William Kent Krueger and nominated for the Edgar Award.
In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder involving a wealthy landowner, a highly decorated war hero, and a native American WWII veteran pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling novel, an instant New York Times bestseller and “a work of art” (The Denver Post)
October 2024: Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, Pulitzer Prize winning sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. This compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions.
December 2024: The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history. Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard.
February 2025: The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism and the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledges, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink.