2013 Kansas Notable Books: Part One - Encore

today's k pr preserve that was originally broadcast on december first and i'm kate mcintyre and today on that best new books by kansans or about kansas each year the state library of kansas dislikes fifteen books as kansas notable books in the first of a two part series we'll hear from the authors of seven of the fifteen on today's k pr presents including fiction nonfiction poetry young adult literature and more we'll even be giving away copies of many of a kansas notable books stay tuned to find out how you can enter a chance to win i met up with many of the kansas notable authors at the kansas book festival held september seventh two thousand thirteen at the state capitol in topeka my first author is lisa hart greater of time to not see this is her second time on the canvas notables lest her debut novel air ball my life in brief was a two thousand six kansas

notable book and a winner of the william allen white children's book award her new young adult novel is the adventures of being boy about tiger mcbean and his search for a new superhero the idea for this book came when i was listening to get to public radio i was listening to a current opinion and howling so several years back and you're secure was dylan's label the stories and what little the story they were two kids who are high school and they were kind of small small smart kids and enabling by the beer or not so smart kids and am they and they do their homework the main job of the seven one time they found out that these bigger mean kids were taken to the junkyard and scare them on halloween night and me sitting out there ahead of time there are wiretaps of the lemay to come here the little car lights came on the horns and so the mean i thought they get to the internet so that was his story and the idea of someone who thinks that they're small and have

no power but they actually have a lot of power inside of that you just tap that that i discussed worked in my head and i started developing character to treatment being a hand i decided that since i'm an artist i going to try and create our a and i think that's why my lesson that this is a way for me to bring that ensued that story so easily lesson dr course he's thirteen years old his ability to draw well he's going to drop so that's where that idea came from the soul wishes superhero is not really of the superman batman spider man for it now he yeah he has a favorite superhero invented to go and he's made of water and they were a contest for a sidekick fourteen students he's determined is no witness a scholarship for his mother and so he's trying to figure out what kind of psychic would go with superhero me to believe while he's garnish your injury in his like assist his last name is libya and so he actually

decides he's going to come up with a cure drinking water and so the way as all the powers of the fork in amphorae voluntary everyone he hosts the medieval part of the team for good what interesting things about being boy is and it's about this superhero capes to allen and the search for his sidekick but it also on another level about tucker and his sidekick and the villain in paralyzed talked about that parallel well you know it's i was thinking that you never really know a person you think you know people because you see the outside of them which don't really know what's going on inside so the antagonist sort of to begin with and the sams a witty she is just need everyone several with a lot of additives the grove a lot of attitude and steel toed combat boots and cheat sheet what the nemesis and she's like the last person in the world he wasn't time well we sent one our school his mother well rather describe his

sidekick is especially good at he needs i'm watching and his entire etsy of the wiki who it turns out needs the money and she's inspired her like too many and he slowly figures out what's going on with her and so he kind of italy gorillas me because here the weather means coming from so i kind of like i won that energy that you can't really judge people by what you think they're doing because there was a reason for what they do at some point you find an hour with a deal of a passage from the way that you'd like to read for us to do and it's one that's one of the reasons because see young handsome and very good for some we see your seat has taken this on comic but the tenor has just bought a nice entre once again home and read it and she's made for some reason he doesn't understand and she throws of intimate violence little bits where we're telling us government uses lot of glitter on it and then the next time we see or she's in this school hallway

and these girls in this class opening up posters for the school the interstates can be a full length and she's mad about something and she reads all the posters go whoa in those scenes we don't really understand why she's so destructive and a handgun as tiger gets to know her a little bit better and the scene is always very short but they were scenes because it's apple of those scenes where she does exactly the same thing but certainly we see it in a different light and we're kind of on her site and says chapter twenty nine i held at our lunch table ignoring my last race getting in my notebook around me are hard little crackle with excitement tomorrow with the fall for a and m and the kiwis were standing there when terry had streaming about balloons and glittery starts to get the cafeteria ray anderson welcome to the fall laying intemperate eight the kiwis twisted looms over cricket breaks along streets streamers and take them along the wall over the trash cans and i'm sure they didn't notice and probably wouldn't care they get but what i twisted and tate same pierce them with isn't with the glare of bad luck

are a nation nate dogg was kicked out anymore he was that eating lunch is a witty table amid the exit sign he charges sale of slim down his milk in yemen from the cafeteria she had three cornered address campus once sat on the way out it asked why he didn't go in for the rebound he let the lying on the floor quite outdoor same troubled her second got to follow him and on her way to the transplant she very calmly very quietly hell of a lot more stealth and i ever knew she had raised her finger along the wall of streamers popping discuss takeaways from each one she was out the door and down the hall before the killing started squealing so i kind of like that happens because it it shows her doing exactly the same thing that now we see it in a different way that's lisa hart greater of time to nazi she's the author of the adventures of being boy the first of seven kansas notable books will be talking about today our next work at kansas best erie is by jake mail and doug head with illustrations by lisa grossman are three of them are from the lawrence douglas county area again this interview

was recorded at the kansas book festival in topeka i think the kansas bessire is perhaps the most unusual will of all of the cancers notable books that i've ever read and i've been trying to give a good way to describe it may be the easiest way is if you can tell me what the best theory is and why you set out to write one well thank you for pointing out that is the most unusual book and we hear that all the time and that we don't take it as an insult at all because we agree that it is unusual toward to categorize it's known as the major ecology vote for your ears but it certainly has been taken as we found out from people over in a lot of different ways arm parents find that their children love to look at it they're drawn to lisa's paintings illustrations while the parents

read essays so the kid can be sitting in the parent's lap an enduring illustrations in the end many parents can be reading to make it as they read the essay but part of the reason also that it's an unusual is because the us is we try to keep short but also a little different than on scientific they're not just they're not sort of artsy their terrible explain we put in scientific facts but we also put in folklore excerpt from poetry personal experiences because part of what we did as much as we could just take field trips encounter these animals one to warren as much as possible so it is going i read and we have found that were stories i'm quite sure what to do with it also we went to warren and it was shelled in the children's section right next to a

little house on the prairie so i don't really have an answer but this is a challenge but it's meant to be an adult ecology book goes where did you guys get the idea to do to do this and what was her driving cause behind writing against a steer michigan are both fans of the author rebecca so much and she in the artist mona karen wrote the california this year and so jake sort of hinted one day at the coffee shop that maybe kansas neither a bustier and so so i would say that was our immediate inspiration the best year actually dates back clear to medieval an even earlier time so maybe it can be traced to something called a fizzy a lotus which dates to about two hundred ad actually and it's kind of and in best years were extremely popular in medieval

times they were as popular as the bible actually so i think i found that rootedness to reform very exciting and it made me think i mean we we we certainly learned a lot about the way rivera moment in the estuary we've we loved but the driving question for me was what would a modern less cheery look like the best theories of the medieval times attempted they were they were on the best attempt at a natural history that had a lot of folklore and so mysticism and but that they attempted to articulate or religious or spiritual common side too and you know it was it was very exciting to try to say in these times in

an ecological context what would've issue of aquatic your medalist curator the kansas best eerie how the collaborative process worked with dad and jake and how you guys work as a team for you to come up with these gorgeous illustrations an hour well at first the ncaa kept the idea of an arms of them they pitched it to me they invited me to that illustrate the work and i am i hesitated all of it because i mean i don't think of myself as an illustrator i'm a fine artist have been for twenty some years in and it very minimal kansas landscapes almost nothing in them but horizon then you know space and light and so i decided that if our gang of the idea and then i decided if i were going to illustrate that it would just have to emerge in the process so i would just have to figure it out as i started to you know researching and

sketching and there so we're going to field trips together and we tried to that and counter of the animals in their place as much as possible and reid took photographs we shared photographs to take some great fraud photographs that it is directly for the illustrations and so we would just me and talk about each animal and they would produce some in her writing and i would produce and sketches and we would kind of once i got sort of a few sketches together we talk about herman decide you know what ailments might katie a sort of layered effect a contemporary kansas what historical or cultural or contemporary elements of kansas to include and we just kind of a back and forth with we all got our own ideas to the table but then we'd get together once a while and

discuss them and see if what gaps might need to be filled in for the court as they're gorgeous pictures thanks keep it when others us has a very different idea of us when i really enjoyed the stuff for it and i think it's because i didn't expect that when you know everyone expects to read about a bison in a prairie chicken bit i had to i got to page about the fare and i that and that's one of the reasons we have different actually they were to have written this book maybe five years ago we probably would've included the prairie dog and within that essay mentioned the black footed ferret but recently and i'll read this in a minute the fair has been reintroduced and it's just that very act of sort of re wilding that fills us with such hope that and not only for kansas but for sort of the great plains and for north american wildlife in general

that we decide who we want to include the black footed ferret and it is a native kansan so long history part of that yesterday when willa cather looked up on the republican river watershed and saw quote motion in the landscape as is the shady grass were sort of blue sky and underneath it turns a while buffalo or galloping galloping she sensed something important most of the activity of the prairie happens out of sight underground or under cover of darkness the grass once supported millions of bison but galloping underneath were untold numbers of considerably smaller razors for adults and just as the bison were followed by wars the prairie dogs two were followed by predators like footed ferrets just a few years ago production of america chapter in this book and the ferret usually considered the

most endangered mammal in the country would have been mentioned there and however in two thousand seven fourteen captive raised black footed ferrets were reintroduced to the largest prairie dog howling in kansas since then we're been reintroduced and have successfully raised several generations of wild weren't yet more than tripling their numbers after a fifty year absence the black footed ferret has earned a place in kansas more than a place in kansas there's no place like oh that's jacob male reading from a kansas testy harry we also heard from his co author deadhead and the book's illustrator lisa grossman kansas bessire was published in partnership with the kansas land trust which benefits from sales of this book and now for our weighty or tom eisenhower in war and peace as

seven hundred sixty page biography of dwight d eisenhower by jean edward smith smith is the author of several acclaimed presidential biographies including fdr which won the france's parchman prize in two thousand eight and grant which was a finalist for a pulitzer prize in two thousand to smith taught at the university of toronto for thirty five years and is now a visiting scholar at georgetown university he joined us by telephone from his home in washington dc thank you for joining us today professor smith into eisenhower in war and peace you say and i'm quoting here with the exception of fdr eisenhower was the most successful presidents of the twentieth century if that's the case why is eisenhower's presidency is so often not forgotten plague well i i think it's been overlooked

i think it was precious shortly afterwards followed by the committee's supporters to curious finally the american intellectual community sort of became bored with eight years of peace and prosperity and so they'd potentially release oliver turned against like but if you look at the accomplishments of their smart ministration book domestically and foreign policy event the standard next npr so let's talk about some of those accomplishments during his presidency and he reigned over the year served sen specter at a game in that the korean war was going on like went to korea i think many people voted for him because i believe that he would defeat the north koreans but he went to we went to create along the babylon he saw that the war was unwinnable and he made this on the thirtieth girl and once like maybe some korean of another american serviceman was killed in action for the remaining years of this presidency now no one else to succeed and can say that

that's a remarkable achievement for your homework twice face down the joint chiefs of staff and members of the national security council who wanted to use nuclear weapons once it didn't include two really different harrison once at the time of that from a strict crisis in good times eisenhower said no they're the virtual the presidents who with his military background experience with her the confidence and courage i guess while in foreign relations were no friends and one and the israel invaded the gypsies the suez canal eisenhower demanded that they withdraw and indeed imports that are made and that would truly been the suez canal when it expands talk to me about his relationship with that other midwestern president from just over the state line harry truman that's a good question i think then and i think many people have that wrong you

truman had his way we were really neighbors and in fact mike's older brother room with harry truman the kansas city room in the house and now so like that he would step down as the democratic nominee at odds and are one of the democratic nomination once was in nineteen forty five just that and berlin has tepid germany's defeat utilized now intro mega succeeded president roosevelt that time that you go back and the vice president of like one of the democratic nomination and forty eight and then leading up to that the key to the nomination a test eisenhardt he won the democratic nomination and they were very very close friends the nineteen in january of nineteen fifty one hudson are went to france to organize nato the ground forces of nato just taken off the ground again and truman who was then stayed there

a friend of mine they fell out during the campaign and seven during the presidential campaign and there were several incidents which would trigger that and it was very difficult for them to get back together again think they did ultimately in writing this book what's the most surprising thing you learned about eisenhower i think that it was as the president i think we all know that the eisenhower command of the great coalition army defeated the germans but i think it was eisenhower's activity as president but it was a very surprising and how much he was really in control all and would stay behind scenes so that one didn't recognize that completely defeated senator mccarthy eisenhower really organized that call the signals and to stay out of the limelight and it wasn't until years

later that it was the people scholars family discovered that it was really it was a calling the shots that brought it down i thought one of the most moving parts of this massive the biography was at the end of his presidency eisenhower requested that he be restored as a five star general and that for the rest of his life he would not be known as <unk> president but as general eisenhower i think that's quite right and if you do it i think that that would have been perfectly understandable after all the reason very small company has a five star general bradley was delighted that time that the all the others had passed away by them and eisenhower spent his entire career really from the time he entered west point in nineteen eleven until things

like the presidency of a major events between fifteen to soap it are considered himself in general and for the total price of president kennedy when eisenhower aggressive that you're quite right professor smith the very first sentence of your book you call eisenhower an enigma the very end of the book his wife mamie eisenhower says she wasn't sure anyone really knew him at all eisenhower played his cards close to his chest and actually with a very great record player but he never liked for people to have to see exactly what he was doing and the things that certainly characterizes presidential years and the military also us is one in which he was often behind the scenes from forget that for a year she was mccarthy's chief of staff wrote when the court refused to step in and in the philippines and then you work directly for general marshall and before that the

original purveyor i knew how to stay out of the limelight but to make the crucial decisions and i think that's why that's why i say you know and i guess i had never put those things together and you have done that but i just had the baby and i saw in the same way that's professor jean edward smith author of eisenhower in war and peace it's one of fifteen kansas notable books chosen this year by the state library of kansas our next arthur is israel wasserstein of topeka his collection of poetry is this ecstasy they call damnation i met up with israel wasserstein at the kansas book festival in topeka i love that there are so many of your poems that are based on a mythology you have a whole collection of poems about the greek greek gods greek and roman goddess of coffee would say use the gods played

poker picnic scene with guides talk about why it is that as characters that they are so appealing well there's a number of things about that the dots in these mythological characters that i love writing about one is that everybody was a little bit about host of soul my audience starts with some ideas for the coming from him but then what i really love is i could go off in some unexpected direction or for my own so a twisted take on and that the ceo of the joy just that provides a lot of fun out to use to explore these characters and be ways i hope are interested in you for some years when they're doing such mundane things i think that i i guess the way i envision it have do you know that because i am i assume that at that zoos who won it last year the poker table like anyone else what i suppose so i think that that's a something i like to play with is

is it always the logical dodson and other creatures are you were that he would come without us understand ourselves better and to help us understand the world that they're going to be doing the things it again and the activities that we understand because of course there are other closely related to us yes and several poems about biblical characters that are from iran all of us adam steve cain and abel an end to a biblically based character lilith who is the title of the book is based on a poem about her talking about that as a theme we dont know i grew up going to sunday school and read the bible and so those are stories that i knew intimately but i also have a jewish heritage and that's where the law's character first appears in variations on jewish mythology and i just not these are great stories they mean a lot to a lot of people at different things to different people at different kinds of our i think that different things to be so i wanted

to explore that from my own perspective try to make some sense of these characters end up and what it also when he was allowed to speak and my posters in the store is that you don't hear much or anything in some cases and some of them i thought well if they were able to give a monologue explain themselves what would they say will be important to them and i just on those and to wage a ride and people simply jury incisive content i also find myself really sympathized with villains in stories and the ivy league the villains monologues in shakespeare all the time and i just i find it supposedly pictures are marginalized or even bad guys and say what they say and sales it's not a bad day in their own mind that's right yet one of the city's advice i ever got was that everyone thinks they're the hero of the story you know character in literature almost didn't want to accept that almost never says i don't want to be in their store they think i need to write these

other people i'm always the protagonist of my own life exactly exactly yet several poems about highway fifty four tell me about that highway and what it means to you in a real sense and done maybe in a metaphorical sense sure we'll have to see a real sense is and i've driven it dozens of times i was going to school at your resume mexico and coming back home frequently to visit family and friends to be getting into i found out quickly that was by far the best way to make that drive the fastest way and while it is white has to it over and over and when your car buyers so for thirty hours it was time to think and the whereas i think in power receded how it might be transformed into poetry that soldiers what needs metaphorically to me well i think it was this interesting to get big orders the two places where i spent most of my

life to be gay and albuquerque and it crosses the great plains which are very important to me and i think to most kansans and i just found it being a place that i could produce yet a lot of the things that i wanted to talk about that i cared about odd to us that it has happened to those boys accepted move cancers geography around occasionally make that work that's poetic license analytics do you get home or two you'd like to read from us sure i think every kansas put probably write about kansas whether at some point and that i was thinking about how my partner southern california and shia it has a very different series of kansas whether that i do and so i sort of was playing with that and the support then came out and i thought at kansas native discusses natural disasters raised in california you freeze with each storm warning listen for the locomotive war and that had a funnel cloud does indeed dark against green black dust

strange i thought you know the earth can swallow cars houses that land glass to see that the big one is inevitable yet a twist there might pass blocks away at levi's underway or chills sirens woke us but now i know you are a child of land and this gets travers you brace hundred were friends without fear i was raised by sky its furious as much as it calls when the evening shows with a hammer of hail it irritates me breathless tennis hall i love that poem thank you to another complex here or we get a lot of all of this is based on a japanese legend actually of curators called fox whites were foxes would take you would for you almost always went in and it would almost exclusively

to a human form to seduce van and that so that they were often those stories of these strange creatures up to no good and i thought wow what would their perspective the faux wife when you slept your skin for what you loved it completely as of ways a gesture when you left your damned your family a thousand census and the forests twisting trails when he took up a life you knew nothing of steps and they get into what you thought you wanted to define what he sought against his strange language the night air may sound familiar tell me fox wife of stepping into a new wife how a body falls away tell me all you founded this place israel was deemed reading him poems from his collection the ecstasy they call damnation think it's so much the evacuees pleasure my next guest is larry be

or nhtsa and he is the author of wide open he joins us by telephone from his home in southern california thank you for joining us today larry york but is that in eighteen seventy one abilene said that the setting of the story for us well gobbling existed because primarily with a jewish context of texas up to the floor was loaded with wild fowl the world we were in texas about three or four dollars if they could get into the northern town market for the vote and the city or chicago they could bring in thirty or forty dollars but actually had no railroad going north so again in the joe mccoy and filth they stop on on one of the new transcontinental railroads going through through campus at abilene and prayed that

the texans will be willing to drive nine hundred miles north to this shipping points so that they could be sent by rail road onto the major markets and that tension between the ranchers and the settlers in the area is at the very heart of your story i have to tell you as i was reading it i just kept thinking about the musical oklahoma farmers and friends while they're there with of course to the conflict between cattle and the floodwaters that were coming in there was that he didn't have anyone there was a big wave of foam and darting in in what we consider a western camp at that point to a central but they were kind of mutually exclusive bit of both the third worst farms in the cal record a lot of land and that they could mix well but there was also conflict because of a cultural

difference between the north and felt the texans are kind of loose and free wheeling in the northern nerves and the sellers work the whole business like throwing down trying to build a life with texans want of all they were they were there a photo of a good time and go home in a notebook the factual would fix your lap of the war and many men had been shooting at each other only a short time before i'm just naturally didn't like each other so the place was kind of a cauldron of the conflict spread in a lot of different directions your main protagonist is their fifteen year old dame will mayor ed talk to me about will's perspective on the settlement of abilene got the idea to tell the tale of this kind of great if the walkout in that year six hundred thousand college and nora so it was a huge economic enterprise and i got the idea to sell

it through the odds of a fifteen year old roman of the town love from oracle book that i read about madeline that stated that there were days of boys with an alloy and one with pro taliban the boys and the other was that was the key the game that includes fathers basically their businesses support the farmers and they were kind of a pro so mundane unlimited gave the boys would come together on the right circumstance and they would fight and the ireland that the the adult politics and culture of the town with him reflected in the end the kid that was working its way down into the into the teenager's and it will be an interesting in her unique way to tell the story of the meltdown which is important times before but this would give it a new angle by doing a lot

of different meanings wide open meaning the countryside wide open meaning be the wide open nature of people's future when i arrived there but also wide open meant in the vernacular of the cowboys account where everything went and you know abilene at that time a lot of prostitution more and more borrowers concentrated in the more saloon concentrated into a small area i'm going and you won't know it wasn't particularly strict he didn't even bring the hammer down to borrow things were really threatening wife eleven so wide open wide open that meant anything goes and the cowboys to hold them larry like you to read an excerpt from wide open for us and if you could maybe you set the stage a little bit oh all right well does this particular scene

has just arrived in town from four corridor where in the theory of them didn't buy the town to hire him and you've got a cup of the job and when he arrives we'll end with father to meet him at the train station and a certain amount of discussion give and take begin than they are at this point they arrived at the drover scattered hotel which was a huge photo i'll build for calm and not to throw a cowboy but the the buyers and the sellers of the hurt so when we arrived at the cottage hickox that right down on the veranda chairs and off handedly of that would you give them lemonade the same as father john the worker and the car began questioning they will figure your father doubling that so often hardly needs a martial would you think i knew for the wooden wanted to be free with a lot of the loose talk of more this was while billy selph of thing my opinion well they are hiring you to be marshaled leveling

they're hiring you to the marshall texas towns and i guess texas town is officially parted ways point forks north of the practice tears fell down and make money over the track that shows that we're going to have a big time and go home and they gave you kind of crazy that both had quickly corrected counseling voting would make rabbits won awards back so it's not really their fault you like them l'oreal like i'm fine i wish i was a cowboy that we have more adventure than them and they're real good to have to stop their knowing it shouldn't say more but the theory of me and believing i couldn't ruth reichl talking well we're sort of fighting the civil war all over again there were northerners the cowboys are southerners they know they're only tolerated have the money to spend it grates on them while the words the

foam day something will fight them often obama felt like juno before calvin protection here a lot of them armed and drunk bailout number of five dogs that had left the ngo not so good father told you we have gotten the stone jail that big of an angry mob attacked and burned the old would wind down dr de cock with a grim and that's not all i was really getting carried away now with the worst hit the cowboys because the cow travel there for crops everyone worried the funds do with farmers going to start a war because a longhorn takes a nap than a corn patch for one minute stop made me feel guilty don't blame for not throwing away if you want to this day that hearts end of all this family in a place like this follow reappeared on the veranda lonely true loaded with drinks and finishes my curiosity was telling me i was dying to ask well bill if he really had killed seventy five hard case men like the time novel that

if you don't mind me asking i said lord my voice you the truth you know that's larry be aaronson reading from his book wide open one of the cancers notable books for two thousand thirty larry thank you so much for joining us today my next guest is our bower author of times shadow remembering a family farm in kansas he joins us by telephone from his home in davis calif thank you for talking to me today you grew up on a farm in clay county kansas told that your family's history on the farm oh my great grandfather was a german immigrant and a civil war veteran and he acquired the eight hundred and sixty acres of our family farm has for the homestead act a baking oven for rome acquired their own farms

borrower <unk> properties enough to join the american air force you know but the nineteen fifty and in my family my father then retain the farm until he died ten or fifty years ago in the preface to time shadow you ride why should anyone read stories about long past kansas farms and the people who lived on them so why should we that's a good question that i imagine for the same reason that really read or listened to stories or experience of the lions and places thirty two most people are most human beings engineered curious about other places other lives and into the book true well written reading the closeness that includes well i think that maybe some of the reasons i know you read about the

financial interdependency feel when you grow up on a family farm talk to me about that sense of shared responsibility and how did that shape you well have a farm leagues that are used to the flow of the joint enterprise in origin theories or another layer in a beginner but also an economic one so all members had at least identify with and commit themselves to the enterprise if you didn't have a wife the new show hart their home no no sales of other ness of supplement family income that there were no children them bono and paid for unpaid if arm and with his knowledge talk about our week our farm park have three identifying the enterprise they were never paid given no on things which simply pitched in and

help the plane survive your own life and career took a very different turn than one might expect for a young man growing up on a farm in kansas by your decision to leave the farm well actually my decision had not been for the chinese troops crossing the yellow river and that korea it is that i think that if they and the subsequent grabbed the most intimate for once i left the farm there are huge arnold crossing the family to hear the exotic world a city of casablanca after that though is pretty hard to stay on the farm after i'd seen a wider world grippo me to leave the farm

can you read a passage from times at all let me say the maids a person going back with my daughter or thirty years ago and we go back to the country where i was brought up there is a passage in itunes review we're serious traveler to stray into the un traveled roads of these know dust let regions appear shaken the daily instead notion of the farmers are people aren't mentioned in these stories the farms are nearly all of our almost all of our relatives twenty five chance an uncle cousins for dead or moved away if the earliest the one room school closed a handful remain a kid looking forward for a morning in a nearly empty buses now stockman the black smoke has long since closed as authorities the church's empty the windows covered in plywood a few kids riding by the

one place to another stop and broke the windows and passed the restore rats invaded the show's gross came to rest any exposure actors they're a report card miles are so our traveler would see the occasional low common california suburban style house for permission to ship alongside and balance plays the lines of home plate to graze the rakes them all there are dan no more barn dances know i'm a bass you know sugary know a rap told and on the barns are growing no commander tear church white tailed deer and turkeys are returned bieber's builder than this but there are no kids to run trend lines at dawn before school in december or trip over pros the darker no way to know because there are no family gatherings at thanksgiving and christmas but there is something to be learned from this century of my family's life on a kansas

farmer and something to the love a short walk and alexander place on a low rise across roads lonely patch of native prairie there's a shovel cemetery enclosed by an iron them over my mother and father their decaying bodies lying face up the side by side the veneer but no no mountain visible even deputies the undertaker was out of work that's arnold j bower author of times shadow remembering a family farm in kansas thank you so much for joining us today our left kansas not a bother for today is what we've featured several times here on k pr presents laura moriarty of lawrence has written several acclaimed books including the center of everything while i'm falling and the rest of her life her latest book the chaperon is about silent film star lore we've

brooks who grew up in wichita it's a fictionalized account of her first trip to new york city and the middle aged woman who accompanied her there this interview with laura moriarty is from akp our prisons are times for those who may not be familiar with the island found tell us a little bit about lily's bronx well she was an icon of the silent film generation and if you don't know the name you probably would recognize the face or actually you'd recognize the haircut and she had that sleek black bob with the banks and i am so people who think they don't know who she is a visual picture than the syrian air force and schlesinger is a big film star in the twenties an advantage was in kansas she grew up on just one inch or vail and then she was mostly grew up in wichita but when she was fifteen years old i read that she had gone into the den as sean damn school you know it was a modern dance martha graham was there in greece in dallas and he's famous modern answers and she i'm doing we've got into the school so she had to go there for the

summer and her parents hired a shopper didn't hire and asked a woman to go with aaron it was just as it was this thirty six year old wichita house what i'd read all the stuff about always about how while she was she was a reverend she was really really smart she wasn't that nice comments extremely competent self possessed and i did not care at all about that social conventions of her dead inside that passed the chaperone you know that was that was a really crazy he really was wild you know and so i wondered well who was this woman and there's just not that much about her use of a lost in history and i fell on the skin and make her up so i made up a name for her in a minute the history for her and i sent them to new york together and so most of the book follows their summer in new york and i thought it was interesting because if this woman was thirty six and nineteen twenty two and that means she this woman the sap around you know came of age quick to the turn of the century says she would've been wearing a course it's a long dress and she might've march for suffrage and she

might've organize for prohibition unit she would be him very very different woman and so i thought what an interesting generation gap images fifteen years or twenty years a difference and they're they're so completely different of grownups are different because you know he's probably isn't wearing a bra you know that's funny because you don't think so much about generation gaps are happening in other areas right and it must've been she reached that must've been huge because they were being in the girls of lewis's generation they were really pushing out a lot you know like to do you imagine now like i think now when i see young women dressed and what they're selling in a chaperone court looking at least brooks and what they must at that bought the first time and girls out walking our pennies showing it must have seemed pretty vulgar and so you know just and trying to get into her friend of mine and not to make fun of her and so she's run

she's wrong because you know how far you can take this us are wondering now how far how far as just me showing ago so the book is that in nineteen twenty two to hear how did you go about capturing that era i did a lot of reading and i took field trips and i watched documentary as i drove down the wichita minutes though wichita historical society and i want to weasel neighborhood i went to the train station where police interceptor and really deadly for new york in nineteen twenty two which was eating station is still there but its board of it as i read everything i could about making twenty two i watched movies set in nineteen twenty two but i realized pretty quickly that he had to be careful because a lot of times hollywood is and as exact as he wanted to be for example i watched the great gatsby which is set in nineteen twenty two but it shows amish at the center and doing the charleston which was not happening yet in banking committee and in fact

louise brooks was tough first person to dance the charleston in london she brought it to london when she was eighteen years old the tough calls it was so yeah yeah she was pretty neat and i am but so you had whatever things like that down i went to the train museum in these guys and these old you know like eighty year old guys wearing overalls and indiana's you you think you can trust these guys to play about trains that they were on they were wrong they were all you know they had air conditioning and train the nineteen twenty two and you know and there would be no they didn't learn pretty quickly you had to go to primary sources in and really you know find things out for a scene or we're setting for a book you know with the best most reliable sort of discrete website called short beats and if you're a history buff i highly recommend this website sharpies s h o r p y apostrophe s and what this guy does as people send an old photographs you know from the ten twenty thirties forties fifties and when he does is he analyze and he picks them apart and says see the scar that in the background this is this model and see you know the reason

that the handles on the side of his that are used to doubt it at about three dozen clothing he does a kitchen appliances he does it with electric light switches is just it's really interesting if you're into that kind of thing and so i get pretty addicted to that moment a lot of votes from the twenties do you also go back and wants the louise brooks movies i did i did you know you can see one just on youtube you can google images watch him but the tivoli in kansas city showed pandora's box which is her best film and i went in and i saw that up on the big screen the way it's supposed to be seen and it was marvelous so what is it about what we as brics that you wanted to capture in this bike well let's see if she had she was really smart and some way she sort of that tortured beauty you know that we've seen before in maryland in an acronym does she was so smart and she was so a defiant and nina she turned her back on hollywood in my work and that that's known to a lot of louise brooks followers but naming an unknown get into his acting like as it's

not for the reason people think it as the big rumor about her was because he knew this sound came in she didn't have a good voice and so they got rid of her but that isn't why i can she actually had a grateful she was a really good actor and there's another reason which i get into in the book but she was so companies use my shoes were tv shows was a very nice and this isn't a character that i think i could have truly connected with us that as a protagonist i thought what a great person for my protagonist to bounce off urban core is someone who i think is a real foil to always in so many ways cause quartet beginning isn't very confident and but she's also got a lot of integrity and she's also kind in a way that always really hasn't and in some ways car is actually more sophisticated than what we use which would probably surprise coretta here because there's also humble i think has to do a lot for each other because korea is

open to learning from always the learning from coral that i like the scenes were there together i think they bounced off of each other really once i was super interested in the dynamic laura do you an answer from the booker you'd like to share with us and un maybe give us a little bit of a lead in to that scherrer i'm just read just a quick passage from when they first get on the train and i might give you this is when they're just leaving wichita on the train they had their own open section corps devil seat facing releases the windows had drawn curtains mean of the same or in velvet as the seats and overhead they each have a small fleetingly they would need bursts until they get to chicago's in a partition separated the sections normally cora like the openness of the day cars but on this particular trip she felt where it before they even left the station a man from across the aisle who appeared about cora's age asked if he could help lower their top window the man had not cornered just offered to lower the window of the two elderly women in the section directly behind them and he

addressed always directly corps quickly answered for her telling him she would let him know if and when their window needed lowering her tone was polite but firm and her real message was clear she was the guard at the gate it always was distressed by her sequestering she didn't show it the brightness of her facing both irrepressible in general directed at no one in particular no matter where she looked at the ceiling at the of the car at the other passengers at her view from the trestle over douglas avenue or gui was obvious and it seemed as private as if she were alone she did not speak to korea but as the gears of the train we meaning collector she smiled her fingers drumming on her lap she tapped her toes when the whistle finally blew in the train lurched forward she tilted her chin opposed horizon exhaled with a sigh it is exciting cora ventured her boys have love train trips when they were small and often when they were older they both insist on sitting by the window watching for puffs of

steam and for years it seemed on every journey she'd had to ask the conductor if they could visit the engine is it ever always rewarded her with a dazzling smile before turning back to the class cory breathed in cigarette smoke and the scent of talcum powder dana leigh across the aisle a baby cried in its mother's arms the mother was trying to comfort the child of cruising kisses and when her efforts failed she turned and gave her neighbors an apologetic work cora caught her eye and smiled goodbye wichita always weighed down a douglas avenue a busy street with our cars disappearing under the trestle wish i could say i'll miss you that i don't think i will that's laura moriarty reading from her latest book the chaperon is just one of fifteen kansas notable books selected by the state library of kansas we talk to the authors of seven of the fifteen kansas notable books today do join us next week when will the rest of the kansas notable authors of kansas

public radio has copies of several of these books to give away if you'd like a chance to win a copy our website k pr that you knew that ed you click on a ticket giveaway i'm kate mcintyre jp are presented as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas