FLORENCE-The fun and adventure never stop… Just a few events coming up next month at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. We have two significant authors visiting, and our gardening series returns for the fall.
Book Talk/Signing
A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost by Frye Gaillard
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Commemorate the 50th anniversary of the infamous Summer of ’69 with this book talk and signing at FLPL. Acclaimed Southern author and scholar Frye Gaillard will discuss his new book A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost.Frye Gaillard has written extensively on Southern history and culture, receiving many honors throughout his distinguished career. Now, Gaillard gives us a deeply personal history, bringing his keen storyteller’s eye to a pivotal time in American life. A Hard Rain is a sweeping account of the 1960s, told year by year. It’s a powerful synthesis of memoir and history that touches on civil rights, social unrest, black power, women’s liberation, the War in Vietnam and the protests against it. But the author also examines the cultural manifestations of change – music, literature, art, religion, and science – and so we meet not only the Brothers Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, but also Gloria Steinem, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, and Harper Lee.
Frye Gaillard is a writer in residence at the University of South Alabama and John Egerton Scholar in Residence at the Southern Foodways Alliance at The University of Mississippi. He is the author of more than 20 books, including Go South to Freedom, Journey to the Wilderness: War, Memory, and a Southern Family’s Civil War Letters, and The Books That Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir. Gaillard is the winner of the Lillian Smith Award, the Clarence Cason Award for Nonfiction, and most recently, the 2016 Eugene Current-Garcia Award for Distinction in Literary Scholarship. This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event. For more information, call 256-764-6564, ext. 128.
Book Talk/Signing
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber
Wednesday, August 21, 11:30 am
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
Novelist Heather Webber, two-time nominee for the Agatha Award, visits FLPL to talk about her new book Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe.
Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe is the perfect blend of the mystery, romance and magic that Heather has been celebrated for in her acclaimed oeuvre, which spans over twenty novels. Bookstr says of Webber’s latest: “This novel is as warm as the cup of coffee you’ll surely want to settle down with as you pick up this book and read straight through to the ending.”
This beautifully told tale takes us to a small town in North Alabama, where a young woman returns after the death of her beloved grandmother, who owned the titular Blackbird Cafe. Anna Kate soon finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about. As the truth about her past slowly becomes clear, Anna Kate will need to decide if this lone blackbird will finally be able to take her broken wings and fly.
Full of quirky characters, a small town that just bursts off the page, food that will make mouths water, and some wonderful magical surprises, Webber’s new novel will captivate readers of all types.
This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event. For more information, call 256-764-6564, ext. 128.
Get Dirty at the Library
Thursdays at 11:30 am, August 22-September 12
Florence-Lauderdale Public Library
The fall edition of the library’s regular gardening series returns. Taylor Reeder of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System will talk about a different gardening topic each week. For more information about this series, call 256-764-6564, ext. 128.
Thursday, August 22, 11:30 am: Proper Planting/Choosing Plants
Thursday, August 29, 11:30 am: Landscape Design
Thursday, September 5, 11:30 am: House Plant Care
Thursday, September 12, 11:30 am: Composting/Worms
