Kansas Notable Books, Part II - Encore

today's kbr presents was the originally broadcast on september fourth two thousand eleven each year the center for the book at the state library of kansas it's the best new books about kansas or by kansans it mcintyre and today on k pr presents the two thousand eleven kansas notable books this year's list covers a wide range of genres and topics everything from a fantasy novel full of magic and political intrigue to a domestic devotional that's a bit of martha stewart transported back to the nineteen twenties is part two of a kansas notable books if you missed last week's keep your prisons about seven of the fifteen books on the list you can find an archive our website kbr that hate you die edu we've got eight more cancers notable books to cover in the next hour we'll start today's program with a mystery set in western kansas the scent of rain and lightning is nancy but cards the second novel to be named a kansas notable book the

virgin of small planes was named a kansas double booked back into thousand eight and was the kansas reid spoke for two thousand nine nancy nice to see you again nice to see you to play so tell us the story jody a blender and her extended family all time first of all that the story started deep in the heart of kansas i was at a panel discussion in manhattan kansas and was a discussion that was being given by law enforcement personnel from the big western states and there was a man who has both a sheriff and a police chief and there was a forensics expert and there was a judge there was a public defender and there's a prosecuting attorney and i was fascinated by everything they have to say about what it's like to work in these these vast kansas counties that have very few people but a whole lot of land not much of a tax base so they don't have a whole lot of money and they said two things that really made me for twenty years and one was that if you're going to have a case of a wrongful conviction it could happen in a

county like that and it could happen for those very reasons that there aren't very many people and sow suspicion falls immediately and the most likely suspect who they said is likely to be a young man who's been in trouble before and may not be major trouble he may have had a drunk driving conviction he may have been picked up for a little bit of vandalism or stealing tools but because these counties don't have much in the way of major crimes it's pretty much human nature to look at the person who looks the most suspicious then you add to that the fact that i am their loan for some people maybe proof ugly that people but they don't have any experience with major content and so you know intimate experience it's easy to find most likely suspect they don't have their own crime labs they're all sorts of reasons that could point the way toward a wrongful conviction and and that got me interested right there and anyone who has read the senate really wanting we'll see how that plays into the plot of this book the second thing that they talked about that really made my ears perk up because it's something that i'm

interested in and they talked about influential people in candidates and they talked about how sometimes even really good people people who are deeply involved in the community and meanwhile can use their influences in ways they don't even know they're using it and they don't want to end up being for good or for ill just in a long time and explored it to a divergence more planes into that player power in small towns in the virgin small planes that there was a story of conscious to critics emmeline use of power by powerful people in small in a small town and it's a different story in the senate realigning because i was interested they are in what happens if you do have really good people and they really are trying hard to be good citizens in their small town and in their county though it the best intentions in the world they do something with really horrendous circumstances and

outcomes and so those law enforcement people inspired me to write this book but i always find to know i think one of the reasons that those mainly target my ears is in the state at this stage in my career in order to spend so much time working on about it hess reason they're really really grabs me and then usually has haunted me for some time and one of the things that i've been interested in for a long time is the whole issue of capital punishment and the issue of wrongful conviction i had done a little bit of work for the innocence project in kansas city to saunter work a very little bit that but i'd also written previously couple books that were basically anti death penalty box and this is not a death penalty but per se but it is a look at what happens when somebody is freed from prison because ostensibly he did not actually commit the crime for which he's been serving a long term and he goes back to the community where he was accused of the crime and what i discovered is that community does not always believe the new evidence and there can be

families of survivors who even when confronted with what is incontrovertible evidence that this person did not hurt their loved one can let go of those decades of bitterness and hatred and the desire for revenge which is on the one hand really to bet on the other hand eventually understandable if your whole being has been consumed for its a twenty twenty five years with paying somebody and with wishing the worst for them and suddenly overnight year informed all sports he didn't do it and he's going to have to live in this small town where this crime was committed for you lost a loved one i just something most humans can let go of all that emotion just overnight and so this is the story of that as well and then there's one other element at but i kept thinking how particularly in a place where there are very many people say there's up a murder and let's say that both the victim and the perpetrator have little

families there you both people involved at the victim and that's a post perpetrator are young man and they have a lot of detail wife they each have a child you just starting out in life that the children of those two people are attracted to one another they end up growing up together once the survivor of her father's murder and once the survivor of his of his father's alleged crime and they have it seemed to me so much in common that nobody else has in common with them that in a way they can understand each other in a way that no other human being can understand them and if you have that depth of commonality with a natural attraction between the two you might have an interesting love story so on top of the whole criminal element and on top of the family saga element and on top of that the whole

business about power plays and small communities i also wanted to add and i wanted to see what would happen in a lonely since i wasn't what if these two people felt an attraction for each other that adam had nothing to do with what there had happened to their fathers that they had to struggle with what happened to their fathers in order to answer the question of what to do about their attraction for one another so all of those things women to the big part of making up this novel and then my task then became an always becomes how do you tie this had arthritis together in a story that people will enjoy reading which i hope they do so with all that swirling around in terms of themes that you want to explore plus some of the characters from the sound of rain and lightning into that setting i mean carrie johnson of rain and lightning as gertie lender who when the story opens is a twenty six year old who is going to be teaching english in the local high school jedi has grown up with as the daughter and granddaughter and niece of the

most powerful and wealthy ranching family in the county and around when she was three years old her father was murdered and her mother disappeared and so jodi has lived her life in the small town and this under populated county is she's she says it's like having been surrounded by a temple babysitters is everybody loves her family their respective family they are indebted to her family and some of them don't love her facial hair salons and so she's felt accosted and taken care of all of her life over the same time struggling too to be herself and to be able to step out of that and and and think for herself and get out from under the influence and power of this family that you love so that's jodi and then they oh one of the other major characters and he is the son of the man who's been in prison for twenty three years and in the opening of this story joe d's three rancher uncles appear surprising her to let her know that billy crosby says has been committed and that he is returning bad day to

small planes and so that sets up the situation for what she has to deal with and what the whole family in the town have to deal with two identical in with nancy picard see is the author of among the numerous other books defense of rain and lightning nancy thank you so much for coming in today it's always a pleasure terry thank you my next guest is elizabeth barnes of lenexa she's the author of star crossed well melissa thanks for having me a taste of your star crossed is unusual in the kansas notables books listed in that it's a fantasy novel and it sets term in an alternative universe where seven moons tell us about the setting of this and how those names come to play as far as the culture and religion this fantasy world of story and star cast is about a young sixteen year old a pickpocket and sneak thief named digger who keeps getting mixed up in non political conspiracies and mysteries even though she tries her

darnedest to avoid it and so world that they're living in the nation is called believer in that and it is ruled by a religious monarchy and hamlet is very very strict and oppressive currently on the current administration their work has been religious inquisition that is brutal and torturing and arresting citizens fund for any hints of and the possession or use of magic and on the sort of the backstory of this world is that there used to be a pantheon of multiple gods who were each represented by one of the world's seven minutes but over the years that has sort of become more focused into worship of only the one the mother

goddess and so that's sort of the idea in the story is there are on the rulings of rebellion that would bring some of those old gods back to pre eminence particularly the goddess of magic certain key characters have just come home from exile and art sort of secretly gathering like minded friends to them under the guise of their daughter's coming of age party and dig our heroine sort of works herself into this family thinking she is escaping the political situation that she has gotten caught up in that when we first meet her she hands it is at the end of a robbery gone horribly awry when she's being chased by green men or the time that the secret police can't

see increasing its herself with a few young family of nobleman and a young noblewoman by convincing them that she is a runaway jewelers daughter and a little does she know that this family she has gotten herself involved with is actually at the heart of the political turmoil she's trying so desperately to avoid and i take issue with the one thing you said mf clip she's trying hard to stay out of trouble i have a little different read on bigger when she's posing as this lady in waiting where she can't help herself from stealing from people right and left and part of me was i was reading this is thinking just keep your hands to yourself you're going to get caught and entities as you've read the budget know that they're on the book is divided into sections and and they are sort of according to diggers are

rules for survival which she lays out for the reader and they are staying alive don't get caught don't get involved in which she and utterly fails to succeed in following these rules she has set out for herself and one by one and you know she she gets caught she gets involved and and it's sort of the story of not just the verbally and that's happening in terms of the external plot but it's also very largely the story a diggers emotional journey from being somebody who who is very afraid she's very alone and she wants to be self sufficient and she doesn't want to be drawn into anybody else's trauma and yet the closer she gets to the political issues the closer the emotional

ties with this family that has taken her in and the more and more she comes to care about them not just because she is has political leanings that align with errors but more because she comes to really care about them as a family and the end dame really take her in and she hastert serve break down her own resistance and her own walls to to let these people you love her essentially and she ends up getting very deeply involved indeed and it's not quite so bad as she wants for elizabeth this is as i said a fantasy novel what age group are you are you hoping to interest in star crossed definitely teenagers it's a little bit older than them like my first novel which was also for young adults it has and more adult content and also i think good teams will respond to that

political plot line in wasilla rebels and ten secrets and and conspiracies and then all of that wonderful big political drama but i have three teen readers of my own and i have to say your book was very well received in my household that's marvelous a lot of your time but they've covered this but it's a really intriguing drawing on it that shows well you've described a fiery orbit the title star crossed and that doesn't really have much to do with star crossed lover that has everything to do with the political situation ending diggers the situation in in the midst of all of this tangle of conspiracies the countless artists but rebels followed about us are whose symbol is a seven pointed star and just as we were finishing up revisions on this but my husband and i were at a

craft fair and it was actually the kansas city renaissance festival in bonner springs and we were looking at a bunch of jewelry and he said book there's a brooch with a seven pointed star on ads and i was really surprised because it's not a particularly common thing and so we bought two of them one for me and one i sense to my editor as a secret message from one rebel to the other and the next thing i know is that seven pointed star ended up on the cover and it's absolutely marvelous you can check out the cover of star crossed for yourself at elizabeth bunn says a website that's debbie you daddy daddy you got elizabeth bunn says dotcom elizabeth b u n c e dot com star crossed was published by arthur able of buying books a division of scholastic we're running through the two thousand eleven kansas notable books

from star crossed to crossing the tracks crossing the tracks is the debut novel of barbara stuber of mission hills welcome barbara thank you delighted to be here crossing the tracks is the story of iris baldwin who as the story opens has just lost her mother she's left under the care of her father who's a bit indifferent even forgetful about viruses presence barbara tell us about iras and the relationship she has with her father and chris's father doesn't really have time for her and although you could say actually air his forgetful i would say he is somewhat indifferent he has his own plans for his future and she is a speed bump in that way i think he's more than just us that she's more than just a speed bump he actively makes plans today stripper off iris read up about iranian arms and appoint her father is an entrepreneur and he says he wants to open a shoe store in kansas

city he's got a girlfriend celeste who he's very interested in one of the string of lady friends that he's had since his wife died i resist mother and so he was to let the kansas city with celeste an open this new store and it's not a spot for iris in that plan so unbeknownst to her without asking her in any way if she would be interested in this he ships he hires her out to will necessary to the middle of absolutely and irises minding the very meaning no clear path to be a crime and companion and housekeeper for an invalid or so iris thinks old lady living in rural missouri so i race basically feels like her life has just cece to catch is going is can only be horrible for her but instead of her life ending when she moves to rural missouri as you might expect this is just the start of a very different path for her

that's right she thinks it's the end of her life and instead she inadvertently cultivates a life there right out of the soil of one of the of the country and he's eccentric folks that she comes to live within the first hour is so only wants to get away she realizes they are incredible duo out that the older woman and her son an irish cultivates a family at the sawmill that's available to her right there tell us a little bit about mrs nesbit the so called invalid elderly woman said she thinks that she's very good to care for right and that viruses even helping ways she arrives at the house and maybe she's already died all the facilities that these armed and you learned that mrs nesbitt has lost hers her own son during world where when and she's lost her husband and she has she's only she has a melancholy as a term would have been in those days and she needs a person

not appeal she needs a human being to help human being to love and that human being comes in the form of virus there you know thinking that it's the end of her world so issa's nesbitt prepares for iraqis and his anticipated her rival iris can't believe that anyone ever we take that kind of time or attention for her so i'm in a book club write a book talk i gave two people in their eighties and nineties they were insistent that i realize how much iris had helped mrs nesbitt it wasn't just the other way around by any means and they saw an iris the kind of potential that older people would like to offer and often don't have a chance to do tell us who your target audience was wait crossing the track and that is a wonderful question one that i've

had a quite a discovery about the book is published as a young adult novel how ever right off the bat of it began to have her reading the audience that was well i would say now most accurately ages twelve to one hundred and twelve and i've done botox for twelve year old mother daughter book clubs or kids in that age group of middle school on up to literally folks in their eighties and nineties one of the first book packs a gator gal who invited me was ninety years old because those folks saw in the care they could plug in their youths threw the character a virus to their history in in parenting and so forth and they saw themselves in the character mrs doctor mrs nesbitt as older folks are a good book i think i should be able to be viewed from three hundred and sixty degrees like that and have a place for a reader to plug into it to resonate with the story so it started i ended up but it certainly didn't stay there more than

two seconds it's a cross will be referred to as a cross over novel crossing the generations which is perfect for a book called crossing the tracks right now crossing the river can i have you read an excerpt from the very beginning of this book and i have to tell you when i checked this but that the lord's public library i had a big stack of books all on against notables was an eye opening this book and was reading it as i was walking out the library into my car and i have to say in the first two pages have me totally hooked i would be delighted to be that this is the prologue for crossing the tracks and it takes place about ten years before i had the bulk of the story gets atchison kansas november nineteen sixteen i am under my most cotton my little house in the center of the parlor hair silky black curtain

walls and a hard ceiling that i can touch with the top of my head if i sit cross legged and stretch my neck they moved all the furniture against the walls except a little round stool right by the copper box so even short people can see mama this afternoon that's why i'm wearing my scratchy church dress with the purple bulbs iris getting calls from the hall where are you i am invisible i lie down with my knees and his footsteps scrape across the road toward mom and me a stop right on the other side of the curtain iris i hold my breath and lifting him the shiny toes of his black boots are so close i smell shoe polish my sealing jiggles the lid of the coffin creaks open then he takes a deep breath and holds it for ever it's so quiet just the three of us have hung together until the door bell chimes and it turns and walks away i reach under the curtain and polls

do look into my play house i try to sit on it but i'm too tall so i dragged it out stand on top and look into the creamy box with thick silver handles that has mom inside she's wearing her dark green dress with colored buttons her eyes are shocked i know she can't play are doing now but i mean down anyway and blink at her like we did at the sanatorium when her throat got to soar for her to talk i drink all different ways and she'd bring back exactly the same we thought it was funny you can just tell from a person's isaac they think something is as funny as you do when momma got so sick they breeding made her car she quit that too i tried to start breeding like her but i couldn't a person can make her own heart stop beating either god has to help you do that it's good now because mom is a coffee she must be so glad

her fingers folded on her chest don't move when i poke sam her shiny hear the same dark brown his mind is tucked under her head it looks lumpia lying on but i don't tell or because dead people can't move any more her feet are under the part of the cops ended that were open i can see your shoes which isn't bad because daddy sells shoes a person wearing the proper shoes for every occasion is real important to him i need to know which pier she is wearing for her walk into heaven i sneak in the marmots in the bedroom a sachet of dead rose petals hangs by a silver ribbon on the wardrobe knob i can't oh she's black pants black berets and white brown with high heels and elastic sites gray and ivory with buttons all six piercing hear one for every year since i was born i dress my hand jerks i not mom issues from their new low steady marches that to me his watch chain bouncing on

his coat i smell is pie he closes the wardrobe almost before i can get my fingers out of the way you made a mess if your heart is in my beer because they're here get off the floor that day turns and points at me with his pipe and be polite you've just heard barbara stuber reading from her debut novel crossing the tracks you can watch a trailer for crossing the tracks that barbara stuber dot com thanks for coming in today barbara thank you it's been wonderful talking to my next guest is amy barrett men of prairie village her book is amy barrett man's vintage notions amy welcome to kansas public radio thanks kate gray to be a year before we actually talk about vintage notions tell us about your inspiration for this book who is mary brooks picken

or mary brooks picken is eight para when our pioneer of the nineteen twenties she was a woman who was a kansan actually was born in arcadia kansas and went on to live in kansas city missouri she was an instructor at the american college of dressmaking she then when i need to be recruited to star in institute in scranton pennsylvania in that institute was the women's institute domestic arts and sciences she then went on to educate three hundred thousand women in cooking selling in millinery through this school where she was the director of instruction she then on went on to work with an advertising agency with her husband in new york city and had clients such a singer sewing and coats and clark fred and she went on to write the singer sewing book that sold eight million copies of its lifetime so she was quite a contributor to a lot of the domestic history that we have here in the united

states on she also then even into her eighties she was an authority on fashion and would travel and report on fashion and dressmaking and was a regular columnist on well into her years as well so she's quite a quite an amazing woman so how did you come across her and in what way did see us or your own interest in the domestic arts well i was researching for my business but then each workshop which is a vintage car or collection online and i found this beautiful magazine that was called inspiration it was published in about nineteen sixteen to about nineteen twenty five and so i bought that magazine sunny day for their graphics and then i started reading this content and relies on that mary was the founder me and her writing really and spoke to me and i realized as i read these essays that it was so the material was so timeless and relevant for

today with time and so many ways that that's really what spurred my interest and mary as a on news are for me and as i had followed a path on with another business that i founded which is indigo junction which is sewing patterns in educating people about techniques for him forgery quilting so that i felt this connection with her as an educator i'm as an entrepreneur as well because she had really masterminded some amazing marketing programs to get this institute well advertised back in the day and so i just you know fell in love with her spirit and then i even contacted her family and i've done major on researching and collecting of her history and her material in her writing and so it's been a really amazing journey with her inspiration in your pocket let's turn to vintage

notions i'm at a loss to describe this book because although it has recipes in it it's not a traditional cookbook although it has lots of selling tips in it it's not really a sewing but how would you describe it i'm looking at as kind of a treasury of material and an inspirational almost domestic devotional that people can pick up its units organize month by month and so is seasonally as you you know journey through the year it's a book that you can reference forum at ideas for recipes or maybe an activity there's for halloween there's tough haul mean party's ideas of how to decorate how that recipe's games to play on but i think there's also it's a nice material just four we went to a few minutes of time for yourself and kind of reflect and refresh yourself it's really for me looking back to look forward is always a fun perspective to

to look at your everyday life and appreciate even particularly the conveniences we have today as compared to the lives of the women on that and as they described you know taking care of eight children and as well as doing all the laundry by hand as well as selling all the children's clothes and cooking all with their fruit from scratch so to me that is inspiring and my day maybe as challenging that i think ok i can deal with this i have to microwave so anyway and it wouldn't be fair to characterize this book as martha stewart meets the nineteen twenties definitely i i definitely have had many thoughts of that that really mary brooks picken was the first martha stewart as far as on the teaching and educating in the appreciation of the domestic arts and end kind of elevating it to a level that on people really admire and appreciate an end up

and then hopefully in their everyday life exercise on that opportunity to really make the domestic art something enjoyable and for failing to build yourself a new family amy barrett mann is the author of a new barracks man's vintage notions amy thanks for coming in today thank you gay passing on a love of the domestic arts is definitely the idea behind our next kansas notable book baking with friends is by sharon davis of manhattan and charlene pattern of topeka baking with friends is a cookbook but not exactly it's a book for kids but again not exactly certainly not how would you describe begin with friends now eh it wears a lot of different hats it's a baking work on because we represent the home baking association is such a teaching book it's great for parents that want to encourage children and families to bake together in the kitchen it can also be used

as a resource for educators because there's so many different ideas every recipe has a baking activity fun fact of vocabulary words and some trivia that goes with that suffer an educator that wants to take one recipe in there there's really a built in the lesson that's ready to use for an after school program or for even youth we work with so many youth encouraging them to teach others to bake something that they enjoy doing let's develop the way the recipes and tommy about maybe one of the activities that goes with that must be one in here i just happened to turn to this one is the quilt patch take and i love this particular idea because it lends itself so wonderfully for a family to do together or forty group activity for an after school program are for group of children together on that in that they can either bake that tape with an x and then the homemaking association we encourage families that you know they do not want to make something from scratch start out with mixes so that children can read

recipes follow directions learn majoring skills so you can either make it from scratch we provide the recipe or you can make it from the mix but then you frost that hagen learn all about quilts with this particular recipe and divide the cake into a nine patchett could be it twelve patch taking you can use fruit letters you can use frosting to make the blocks like you would a quilt and then let each member of the family decorate their particular block and in this particular recipe we encourage families to learn about quotes i think one of the great parts of our book is that every recipe is tied to a gladiator book and with this one it's learning about quilts and so that they'll have an idea of what are those patterns what my name on that would make my particular block us special another activity that goes with this particular recipe is colored sugar and what a great silence activating it so many times we forget that cooking is science baking a sign of what happens when you put a liquid and baking powder

together and you have this wonderful creation that happens when you have all these ingredients and the same way with colored sugar political great opportunity for children to learn on by putting different colors together what colors that they can make and if you put a little bit of sugar in a plastic bag that seals and then each child pick the colors they want to plant and vcr that that really well so you don't have any chance or sugar giving out and just let them work with it with their fingers in now a move that sugar ray on to actually colored that and then all the children can share that sugar so that each block is a different color a different shape they can use patterns templates to make circles or make a diagonal like they would in a quilting use the different colors sharon do you have a favorite recipe in the book oh absolutely they become all my favorites really charlize as well as my own and i'll be brought here for you today the confetti cornbread because it's just

spot on right now this season on in the confetti cornbread we get to talk about corn as the regional grain to us that basically saved all of our european backsides when we came here i was you know that wonderful garden produce they get very clever as a whole grain corn bread made with whole paul corn meal classy concern his home wheat flour you can use a bland and others packed live on the grated or charter diced on pepper's onions and even degraded she says so that their country itself is extremely and nutritious but it's beautiful to it also smells delicious sharon friday and a dozen corn muffins with her and they're sitting right here in front of me and they smell fabulous services were done and the freedom to be the line what is love cornbread because it's way traditionally corporate brand and so it's very easy for young kids to do there's an even little because you'd be amazed in the back of the book there is a chart what can you start a two year old with a kitchen

not quite this but maybe a three or four year old could hold a plastic knife and they can literally cut out those peppers your and you can have a bacon don't think she's and they condemned the ingredients in yuma cream a german they're little kids but you can have them already adding to the ball already using a whisk just her they're so excited what are some of the activities that might go with corn muffins only one thing you can do is actually reading that an additional story about corn i have over here a book about horovitz which right now in kansas will begin to see those combine to roll soon we will be harvesting corn if on god willing we have corn harvest for people you can actually let them experience that peace so that you can if you want to go online you can let them see employers may all have one of our members which is north american lawyers association man dot org it will show them how corny is actually nailed or flowers melanie can usually see that aren't so those utilities right gear and

the other one would be on actually growing the peppers if you've been able to work ahead with them in a pot or in a garden they can grow ingredients like onions and peppers and maybe they don't know very much about cheese and you can go online to cabot cheese start co op which is sound is actually a northeastern dairy and you'll see a dairy farm yes he had jesus made so if you can't visit a farm which would be ideal right here in kansas we have that more often than many do that if you can't you can go online and see a lot of these things happen for more information about the home baking association and how you can use baking to teach kids about farming food science and history visit home making bat o r g baking with friends recently received the national ben franklin award which recognises excellence in independent publishing my next guest is a familiar one to regular listeners of kbr presents disney slow was the poet laureate of kansas from two thousand seven two two thousand nine

her latest book is ghost stories of the new west disney's those stories is subtitled from einstein's brain to gerardo mose boots what does that mean this is the new west where you know you may have heard the story about einstein's brain didn't sections and kept in lawrence for a while actually ends the the director who was present at the dissection actually have lived in lawrence a while so at this as like a complex society this isn't the old west but the other interesting knitter penetration it's and so many times i asked poet laureate as i was traveling around the state i felt like i was me again ghosts in different forms for example one time i was in the bow one of the family cemeteries hands and old old man it was

like a hundred ten degrees ac mirages on the highway anyway an old old man was without knowing crew and is only a kansas woody have ninety year old people elbowing in nearly ninety degree heat are a hundred degree heat and he struck up a conversation with may one until he finds a all my family owned plots and which is that the right setting any way of course i don't like going there in broad daylight when it was hot and and then they started saying ok he's said to be you know i am custer's great nephew and we start and i was like oh my god i show here so the service slightly odder altered genetic pattern of this mythic bad indian fighter you know like not politically successful guy but a very notorious and i was just knocked over and that happened over and over on the

dvd imprint of the front here days is not that far gone from here and you know and i'm thinking well we're probably starting in the eighth generation by now that circle at a bit dirty within my memory and then with in my you know my grandmother lived to be ninety five with in her memory so i just aren't thinking about how influenced i m by eight these eu past and however grief can figures itself and god comes into being right in front of male the time and he's committed to every party from aaron nicholas and sure i guess this is one where i finally got some of the family stories after years of odds and ends of our family secrets and repressions of different bloodlines and so forth and i started to realize that i myself my own body is kind of a sudden goes of our

contradictions and i call this my diet's bora look it might appear to be one small woman but i embody the genealogy of opposing soldiers the celtic picked fighting a saxenian fader the irishman fight in an ulster unionists i use a language of seafaring traders and pirates were borrowed words shuffle subjects and furthers the nights might be weird as specter's weirdly spirits might be managed to want or need so kiely of the potomac over jenny englishmen falls to an arrow la burr marries a senator woman jane a georgian name chapman goes to a union prison an ohio and makes boyd dies on a confederate boat all of these were my grandfather's none were born here i lived in kansas as soon word for southern wins i study

cherokee trial it they got their local on my name's are french and hebrew and celtic also my mother in law gave me an algonquin name each done the diaspora begins inside my skin my father kept his grandfather's what luck in the closet his texan mother feared it killed her southern kin folk i remember it's dark wood warren stock and iron fittings i remember my mother's death songs and metal and bars i was born with straight black hair had curled enlightened in the sinai freckle and tannin sunburn all at once democrats and republicans catholics and protestants traditionalist delaware's a methodist charities i shall of ames for the north's i have thick tropical blood i fit nowhere completely everywhere a bit never do a rest you are the melting pot you wouldn't

think so would you convert indeed that we view most people who have been in kansas more than a couple generations we are will came home they commemorate the limestone around here has been an incredible influence on may and every day we see these fossils from two hundred million years ago and to our favorite places in buildings and they're bend in the road and i was the kid of bad as i was looking at my stepdaughter sonogram for our first grandchild this is called inside her belly the spine this creation story begins with fog oceans are the sky values are dark for aids the hero has a delicate fish bone spying connected to a lump and hand or delicate firmly for a

dobro curl around uncertain little continents or is this a water snake spine or a limestone fossils returning to life that's former poet laureate and the flow reading from a ghost stories of the new west from einstein's brain to duran i'm mose boots we dig into the k pr archives for our next kansas notable book stephen fried if the author of appetite for america how visionary businessman fred harvey built a railroad hospitality empire that civilized the wild west in kansas there's perhaps no better symbol of fred harvey and the impact of his hospitality empire then the harvey house in the town of florence this was the biggest feeding stop for the us in topeka santa fe in kansas and fred was asked to come in and take over this hotel he did and what he hired on the chef and manager of the palmer house hotel in chicago which you know that sort of big settles in the world at

that time the common run this little hotel and determined to win today's like a boutique hotel where the owner the shifting to do whatever they want and the idea was a british chef which you could cook all kinds of different cuisine cooking the bounty of america all things that we don't even find in our streams in our fields anymore but at that time that maybe you could chill the samples of all these fish balls incredible stuff and we know this because the first writing about this hotel was in the papers in london the cover of this thing that these two british guys who created this amazing thing and people should flock there to check it out it became the clifton hotel it really was a prototype of what the party chain became in terms of this idea that in the middle of no where you can get food that was better than you can find at any city and anybody could happen it was just for rich people stay in an expensive hotel it was for anybody on the train to democratize after that was a big deal reports that time were not well loved you know they were the big businesses of the day

people hated them like a lot of people who are big business is fred harvey humanize the railroad says that surprisingly they began putting his name on everything with the santa fe right away because people like fred harvey even if they didn't like people who were big railroad business and what it really liked was the phrase great innovation of course the harvey girls on at the company been around for a couple years and in the places that were not always women especially got further west was considered dangerous for women to work in restaurants until a single women and towns in new mexico were prostitutes other there was also a great deal of racism in the far west and african american leaders in his restaurants regularly get beaten up and killed the kerry joins wallace or so the parties decided that they would do something completely different it's or try to lower the testosterone level in the west by taking all the african american male waiters getting other jobs in the restaurant was forward positions and i think bringing women from kansas city trained here out to the west hoping this will calm things down of course it was incredibly successful because the ring in the only single women most of these towns

the harvey girls for at least six months and beyond married for six months most of them made it a lot of them didn't but so the company was bring a steady flow of single women to all these towns and this phenomenon went on for thirty or forty years the harvey girls began eighteen eighties the company was hiring centrally and sending women out all these locations until the nineteen forties so over a hundred thousand women had this experience of the harvey girls they were the first working women america incredibly feisty the desire to travel to stay with the company for six months to get a free ticket to anywhere the santa fe went and they were amazing women still need some of that the one jimmy today alone lynn served during second world war ii when we've been lucky results were to la fond of the hotel in santa fe new mexico and waited on the physicist working on the manhattan project because that's where they went after they tested the bomb and after they went with someone well to los alamos on

from various methods differ costumes from different time periods and you can just see this enormous number of women from all different parts of american life one who came together and to have this incredible experience was seen as sort of like the flu season the west so they dressed in sort of floor to ceiling close to being a non issue could be there were allowed to wear makeup thing they were tested them actually no makeup on before around the floor and they were almost never photographed with manson know would think they were out there to date but of course they're also heartened that no one ever tells that story you know we're talking about a company that had sixty sit down restaurants which was chicago los angels they trained an entire generation several generation of american chefs of american hotel managers restaurant managers an enormous number of people today whatever restaurant you have in kansas city will say we know he trained there and that was the phenomenon all over the country for the riverfront park stephen fried is the author of

appetite for america how visionary businessman fred harvey built a railroad hospitality empire that symbolize the wild west this recording is from a talk stephen fried gave at the kansas city public library you can listen to the rest of that tarp at our website k pr that pay you that edu only one more book on our list of the two thousand eleven kansas notables george paris is the author of a distant home he joins us by telephone from his home in topeka welcome george take us back to the year nineteen twenty and the story of m lee o'malley out in western kansas well it only moved in with her in law family and would not welcomed shortly after her marriage her she would better educated and i had the night for close having been a schoolteacher and then in la family

did not welcome her because of that they thought he was going to be because he had better clothes were better educated than they didn't expect her for the treaty rather badly in fact much of their conflict also the centers around the issue of un analysts returned to teaching yet it had a circumstance where he forced to become a home or simply do the hard work of cooking and laundry and all the hardships and at the mother to have a child the work is so difficult out there with a laundry in hang out on the clothesline and cold weather in the cooking on the range keeping water hot and been much more primitive kind of the memo used to work take sam i understand the story is loosely based on the

experiences yeah it's it is my mother encountered many of the difficulties that are told in the story the incident about learning to drive the model t is one of the things that my mother encountered over the loyalty of your laugh maude in this story who with my aunt mabel not fiction but the reality in your life i remember that label and rather like character we're going to have years after my mother moved into their family out there certainly this is your mother words are read this about edison how would see recognize herself in it but a bigger question i think you might be part of it she never got to return to the team and he hopes to do and

i understand that for the two candidates who for a while but that was about to close the things she got many of them in the story that are are really than had been fictionalized a lot and they're based on real thing that they are highly fictionalized georgia again congratulations on being named to the kansas notables last quote we close today's program wait george harrison's novel i just ain't home emily hurry down the stairs and burst into tears she found it difficult to see as she lit another lamp and the kerosene burner her kitchen stove she said about preparing to feed rachel her feet eight with the cold is the fire warmed the milk in the room she took rachel in her arms and collapse into rocking chair mother and daughter saab together she longed to be back in woodson county kansas near her own relatives and friends the

wedding had taken place fifteen months ago in the fall of nineteen eighty and it was a happy occasion at the home of emily's grandmother and woodson county known from david's family had come to the wedding david was the proud unhappy groom pleased to marrying a beautiful and intelligent schoolteacher their courtship had been mostly by mail however says he and his family moved to lorain county some five years earlier their love had been declared for each other in those letters m lee was fairly certain she knew her husband but since coming to live with her in laws in lane county she tried in vain to an acceptance and a degree of respect she'd been a high school principal prior to her marriage and adele were several large young really young man that she had never encountered the kind to stay in her husband's family had shown her they resented her intrusion into their lives in spite of the fact that she had taken over several of the most back breaking domestic responsibilities dear little rachel she whispered to her daughter i don't know what to do i really don't know and i've never learned to live with these people that's an excerpt from

a distant home by george paris serpico a distant home appetite for america go stories of the new west speaking with friends vintage notions crossing the tracks star crossed and the scent of rain and lightning eight of the fifteen best new books about kansas or written by kansans named by the center for the book at the state library of kansas if you missed last week's k pr present on the other seven kansas notable books it's archived at our website k p r k u that the eu many thanks to the kansas notable offers the center for the book at the state library of kansas and stephanie proposal for help with today's program i'm j mcintyre cavey our present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas