2013 Kansas Notable Books: Part One

with the holiday shopping season upon us how about a good book or two for the readers on your christmas list i came at entire and today on k pr presents the best new books like kansans for about kansas each year the state library of kansas selects 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 will even be giving away copies of many of the 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'd get to the end the nasa that was historic 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 and 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 maybe billie whitelaw he's garnish your injury in his life is is his last name is libya and so he actually

decides he's going to come up with a character named england 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 needs to alan and the search for his sidekick but it's also on another level about tucker and his sidekick and the villain in their law his talking about the peril 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 entity they can 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 lisa do you have a passage from be what you'd like to read for us to do and it's one that's one of your receipts because see young handsome in a very good for some we see your seat has taken this on comic but the tenor has just bought a nice entre once again will 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 fulfilling and she's mad about something and she reads all the posters john wall 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 spending their legendary its streaming about balloons and glittery starts to get the cafeteria ray anderson welcome to the fall laying intemperate eight the kiwis twisted looms over like a great 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 if 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 under 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 and went out the door singing trouble her second got to follow him and on her way to the tress can 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 to scott's 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 tonga 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 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 at it and a lot of different ways arm parents find that their children love to look at it they're drawn to luce'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 because we did you guys get the idea to do to do this and what was her driving cause behind writing the kansas last year michigan are both fans of the author rebecca so much and she in the artist mona karin ro the california this year and so jake sort of hinted one day at the coffee shop that maybe kansas needs 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 that first the ncaa kept the idea and then they pitched it to me they invited me to 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 still 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 of the 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 gorgeous they're gorgeous pictures thanks keep it when others us has a very different idea of years 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 was such hope that 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 the walls the prairie dogs two were followed by predators what 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 war chants more than tripling their numbers after a fifty year absence the black footed ferret has earned a place in kansas lower into place again in kansas there's no place like oh that's jacob they'll reading from a kansas testy harry we also heard from his coauthor deadhead and the books 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 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 that that sense of a release oliver turned against it but if you look at the accomplishments of their smart demonstrations both 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 ceci extract he came in that the then the korean war was going on i quit to korea i think many people voted for him because i believe that he would defeat the north koreans but we went to we went to create along the babylon he saw that the war was unwinnable and you made these along with thirty eight girl and once like vacation korean of another american serviceman was killed in action in the remaining years of this presidency now no one else can say that that's a remarkable achievement

twice face down the joint chiefs of staff and members of the national security council who want 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 presidency with his military background experience with her the confidence and courage i guess finding foreign relations were no friends england and israel invaded the gypsies the suez canal eisenhower demanded that they withdraw and indeed imports and they come and truly been the suez canal and take a chance talk to me about his relationship with that other midwestern president from just over the state line harry truman and that's a good question i think then and i think many people have that wrong he and truman had his say 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 eisenhower one of the democratic nomination once was in nineteen forty five just that and merlin has tepid germany's defeat utilize now that he had china just 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 cleaning up the nomination a test eisenhardt he won the democratic nomination and they were very very close friends and it didn't get january of nineteen fifty one eisenhower went to france to organize nato the ground forces of nato just taken off the ground again and truman's request and today they are during the campaign of 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 and i like to stay behind the scenes so that one didn't recognize that completely defeated senator mccarthy eisenhower really organized that call the signals and they'll 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 rocked mccarthy 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 had 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 eisenhower considered himself in general and for the total surprise to 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 today he never liked for people to see exactly what he was doing and the things that certainly characterizes presidential years and the military but for also us is one in which he was often behind the scenes from forget that for eight years he 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 that they never got a person who's in a lot of 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 what is that everybody was at least 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 but my own sort of twisted take on and that the ceo of the joy just that provides a lot of fun opportunities to explore these characters and be ways i hope are interested in you for some years when they're doing such mundane things yeah i think the term 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 engage in 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 eve 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 that 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 it 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 you'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 stayed on why wages wages 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 it borders the two places where i spent most of my life to be get in 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 project 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 and kansas just a few round 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 she has a very different series of kansas whether that i do and so i i served was plagued with that in this poll that came out 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 this 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 twister bypass 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 frames without fear i was raised by sky its furious as much as it calls when the evening shows with a hammer of hail the gear takes me breathless cans 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 then i saw 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 which you left your damned your family a thousand samples 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 when 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 the jewish in fact affect the third up to the floor was loaded with wild cattle were only worth in texas about three or four dollars if they could get into the northern town market for a book 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 are built they stop along 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 point so that they could be sent by rail road onto the major or

marketplaces 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 had these 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 a horse 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 settling 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 the fact we think you're unhappy with the war and the new management should be at each other only a short time before and 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 one of the greatest of all telephone in that year six hundred thousand elk and northward was a huge economic enterprise and i got the idea to sell it through the odds of the fifteen year old roman of the town from oracle book that i read about madeline that hated that there were days of boys with an outgoing 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 was been reflected in the in the camp that was working its way down into the into the teenager's and i just upload be an interesting and her unique way to tell the story of that countdown which is important times before but this would give it a new angle a lot of different meanings wide open meaning the countryside wide open meaning be the wide open nature of people's future when they 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 more borrowers concentrated in the more saloon concentrated into a small area i'm going and you won't know but it wasn't particularly strict he didn't even bring the hammer down tomorrow if 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 at will and the 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 hotel built for calm among the flow of cowboys and with the buyers and the sellers of them 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 it so well off that hardly needs a martial what do you think i knew for the wooden wanted to be free with a lot of the loose talk of war this was while billy selph of thing my opinion well they are hiring you to be marshaled leveling is they're hiring you to the marshall texas towns and i guess texas town is officially a part of their ways point forks north of the practice tears fell down and make money

over the track that showed that and look and other big time and go home and again you can agree that the fed with detective 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 adventurous than them and they're real good to have kids i stop here knowing i shouldn't say more but there are no ongoing didn't i couldn't look like they will we're sort of fighting the floor all over again there were northerners the cowboys are southerners they know they're only tolerated have the money to spend it grates on the father worries that from day something will flip 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 i think of an angry mob attacked and

burned the old would wind down dr nikolic would agree on 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 that some stupid farmers going to start a war because the longhorn takes a nap than a corn patch for one minute stop made me feel guilty the wind farm are not growing old if you want to this day of hearts and of all those family in a place like this father reappeared on the veranda lonely through loaded with drinks and finishes my curiosity was telling me i was dying to ask while bill if he really had killed seventy five hard case men like the time novel that if you don't mind me asking if they're lowering 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 evan kohlmann for rome acquired their own farms borrower <unk> properties and that he joined the american air force you know 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 i imagine for the same reason that really read or listen to stories or experiences of the lions and places you're the world live in let's say a comparative perspective to learn to live well people are most human beings seemed to me a 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 family farm leagues that are used to the flow of the droid andrew lloyd is

or another layer the dinner 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 bono and paid for unpaid the farm and with his knowledge talk about our week our farm far haven't reinvented foreign enterprises they were never paid given uno 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 and i've been for the chinese troops crossing the

yellow river and that korea it is that i think that if they and the subsequent wrap the most intimate for then once i left the farm hoosier version crossan sam live 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 propelled me to leave the farm can you read a passage from times at all let me say that aids a personal i went back with my daughter thirty years ago and we go back to the country where i was right out here is a passage and i could read to you we're serious traveler to stray into the un traveled roads of these know just let regions appear shaken the

daily instead notion of the four major people aren't mentioned in these stories reporter nearly all of our almost all are relatively twenty five and someone close cousins forget or move away if the earliest the one room schools roof of a handful remain a good looking forward for mourning and it nearly empty buses choke the town where sparkman the blacksmith 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 and their report five miles or 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 borrowing and you know i'm a bad feeling know sugary know a rap told and on the barns are growing no commander tear church white tailed deer and turkey to return the beavers builder damage 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 a crossroads lonely patch of native prairie there's a shovel cemetery enclosed by an iron them over my mother and father

their dictate body 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 newark 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 talk a little bit

about what we've 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 she a gun 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 her and 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 extremely competent self possessed and that i did

not care at all about the social conventions of her daily insights that cast a chaperone you know that i wasn't crazy you really was wild you know and so i wondered well who was this woman and there's just not that much about our issues that were lost to 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 so she would've been wearing a course it's a long dress and she might've march for suffrage and she might've organized trip in addition you know she would be a 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 developers you know he's probably isn't wearing a bra you know that's funny because you don't think so much about a generation gap see

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 are walking out their knees 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 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 in which does eating station is still there but its border 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 isn't 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 a conflict in fact louise brooks was that 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 a 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 first or second tour 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 at that event about the desolate 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 the neck i think that she was so smart and she was so i had defiant and nina she turned her back on hollywood and i want and that that's known to a lot of families berkes that fall worse but naming an unknown get into his acting like is 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 carrot to that i think i could have truly connected with us that as a protagonist i thought would agree prison 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 the weeds which would probably surprise coretta here because there's also humble i think these 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 have 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 uno 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 to join us next week when we'll visit with the rest of the kansas notable authors kansas public radio has copies of several of these books to give away if you'd like a chance to win a copy go to our website to a pr that you knew that ed you click on a ticket giveaway i'm kate mcintyre k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas