KPR Presents; 150 Best Kansas Books; Part 1

If you were asked to pick your favorite book about Kansas, what book would you choose? What about your favorite 150 Kansas books? I'm Kay McIntyre, and today on KPR presents the 150 Best Kansas Books, a list compiled by the Kansas Center for the Book at the State Library of Kansas, in connection with the state Sesquicentennial. We'll visit with a number of the featured authors on the list today and on next week's KPR presents, including mystery writer Sarah Peretsky, geologist Rex Buchanan, and children's authors Devin and Cory Skillion. But first we'll hear from Roy Bird, director of the Kansas Center for the Book. Welcome Roy. Thank you for having me back on your show. So how did you choose these 150 books? The criteria was very simple. A significant aspect of the book had to relate to Kansas. The book might be a fiction telling a story about Kansas, or setting Kansas. It might be about its culture, its heritage, or it might be

a historical in nature. It could also be a book that was written by a recognizable author who can clearly be identified with Kansas or calls Kansas home. So when you look at the list of the 150 Kansas books, would you say that most of these titles are familiar or will readers find some surprises? There will be some that some of the author's names will be familiar. Some of the titles will be familiar, and there will be quite a few that may be surprising to folks. The purpose for the 150 books list was to raise awareness of Kansas books and authors. Also to highlight authors who write about our state and to encourage Kansas residents to use their local academic school or public libraries. And the reason behind that was even if a book is no longer in print, the library is a place where you can

find it. You can go there and most public libraries in the state have something like a Kansas collection or a particular section of the library which contains Kansas books. And if they don't have the book, you can also request interlibrary loan and ask for them to check because it's probably somewhere in this state. The reason I say that is because we open this to the public and we asked for folks to use that criteria that I mentioned earlier and send in suggestions. We got, and to be honest, I was concerned that we might not even get 150 books. If you sit down and think about it, it's difficult for an individual to list 150 books about Kansas. As it turned out, we got lots more than that and we had to look long and hard at the submissions and a number of

criteria to make this final selection. So we'll have 150 books that may surprise books, may interest books, they're generic, they are children's books, they're young adult books, they're adult books, they're our scholarly books, they're our fiction works, they're, you know, anything imaginable. And that's true of Kansas. If you look at Kansas, you'll see that Kansas have been involved in almost every aspect of human endeavor. And that's true of the writers as well. I've been visiting with Roy Bird, director of the Kansas Center for the Book at the state library. Thanks Roy. Thank you. The 150 best Kansas books list has titles both familiar and unfamiliar, everything from the Wizard of Oz to the WPA Guide to

1930s Kansas. My first guest definitely falls into the familiar category. Robert D. is the author of the best seller, the last cattle drive, published in 1987, as well as speaking French in Kansas, published in 1989. Robert D. joins us by telephone from his home in Maryland. Mr. Day, how did you come up with the idea of a fictitious cattle drive across modern day Kansas? Well, first of all, some people don't think it's fictitious and so I get letters every once in a while saying I got something wrong or that there was no cattle drive at all and they've got records to prove it. So that's part of the problem. The other thing is is that I got it from two sources, the writers get things from. I got it from quote, my quote, real life, which was working at a small ranch from Northwestern Kansas, no central Kansas. And we drove cattle and I wasn't the rookie of the narrator, but we hired a rookie out of Kansas City one summer and I sort of

watched him and how innocent he was. And since I came from the Kansas City area, I understood that in a sense about rural life. But I had a horse and we moved cattle quite frequently. We didn't drive them 250 miles. So I had that experience and then I also had another experience from quote, real life, which is the read books and there was a famous book at the time in the early 20th century called Log of a Cowboy by Andy Adams. And so I was reading that and that's about a cattle dog. So those two came together. And there's a third element that all writers know about, which is something we call invention is to say the the other two things come together. And then you begin to invent off of that, change things and so forth. That drive never happened. Although I did sign in all the characters of the book for a hotel one time. So a literary historian will wonder because they're all signed in there as if they'd eaten there. But so

that's where the idea came from. So set up the story for us. Why is it that they're driving this cattle from Western Kansas all the way to Kansas City? The main character, Spangler, has got his temperament on and he's had it with truckers who are costing him a lot of money and he wants to do it. It's an adventure for him. And he has a hired man named Jed who was once on the long cattle drive. And so he's self-motivated to do it. The actual plot of having an evil character forcing him to do it was not part of the novel. It was later part of a screenplay written by Robert Getchle. But I didn't put that in there. I thought that was a bit much. So I just motivated Spangler, the character, the main character who want to do it for the vigor of it and the spirit of it and to see if he could do it. And he did sort of. But that's what happened. The story

takes place in the late 70s and it was motivated by high price of cattle, high price of trucking and everything else. I'm visiting with Robert Day. He's the author of the last cattle drive. Mr. Day, I'd like for you to read an excerpt for us. It's where Leo Murdoch, the narrator, the school teacher from Kansas City has been put in charge of the city portion of their cattle drive. And he's starting to have some real second thoughts about how this is going to go. Could you pick it up on page 57? I was getting anxious. I could see myself straw cowboy hat set straight and level on my head, back straight in the saddle with a bullwhip in my right hand, the reins in my left, riding in my faded jeans and Levi's workshop, riding back into the part of the state where I'd, from where I'd come. I could never get the dream of the drive to go

through the particular suburb where I'd lived. It was much too far out of the way for one thing. Plus the vision of 250 steers scattered throughout my lawn and hedge and pinnocks suburb was more than my minds I could see. But I could get the girls I had awkward at the swimming pool to stand in lines along central Avenue and say, yes, yes, that's the same Leo Murdoch who used to guard at the pool, the very same one. They'd wave and I wouldn't remember them, but I'd wave back. When it came right down to it though, I didn't see how we'd ever make it. I thought we'd get across the western part of the state without much trouble. Most everybody drives their cattle a few miles down the road from one pasture to another, or even a day's drive from one ranch to another. It was just a matter of stringing a number of one day drives together, but I didn't see how we'd ever get through Kansas City. I grew up there. I knew what it was like. We'd either have to come through the suburbs of the south and down the southwest expressway or come straight through Kansas City, Kansas, and then over the central street bridge. Going through the heart of the city was shorter, but that didn't

make it possible. I got to thinking, these weren't my cattle. This wasn't my ranch. I had nothing to lose. The tubels got 250 steers into the middle of Kansas City, and they scattered all over the place. That's where I could afford to bathe and push Spangler into the drive. I got to ride high in the saddle and have all those guys I drank with back home at Kelly's offer to buy me a beer and ask what it had been like before the herd went berserk. Anyway, I'd cut it though. It seemed wrong not to tell Spangler. I didn't think he had a chance to make it through the city. We can't get through the city. I said to him one morning as we were drinking coffee at the house in town and waiting for a jet. What? You'll never get the steers through the city. If you're still thinking about driving the herd to Kansas City at all, I think I better tell you that there's no way you're going to get them into the stockyards. Why the hell not? He said, have you ever been to Kansas City? I guess I have. In fact, every time I get there, go there. I get lost and wind up in the stockyards. He grinned. Never fails. We tried to go to the Starlight Theater one year to see Oklahoma and wound up in the stinking

stockyards. I think I can get there by now. That's not what I meant. What did you meant then? How are you going to keep the herd together and all that traffic? How are you going to keep them from running up every alley along Central Avenue? What makes you think the traffic is going to come to Grouting Hall so you can drive down the middle of the streets that are so crowded now everyone wishes his horn was a gun? What makes you think some shoe clerk who keeps his 32 pistol under his cash register to shoot robbers isn't going to go away when he sees 250 steers coming down the street at him and pull off a few rounds at you. That's your problem he said just as Jed drove up. I feel really sorry for Leo at this point. Well, that scene has been stolen. Again, I'd come back to literary theory. Those are people who read American literature will know that Leo's having the same kind of self-consciousness that Huck Finn has on the raft about Jim. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about your other book on the Kansas 150 list and that's

Speaking French in Kansas. Right. It's a collection of short stories. I've wanted a few people who doesn't think it's all that good. I think there's some good stories in there. The famous one is the very title one. It's won a number of awards. It gets anthologized. It's called Speaking French. In fact, I'd like to volunteer to read something from not that one, but from Chloe in the canoe in that book. If I can speak up to read something that I'd like to choose. Just read the opening section of it and tell you a bit about it afterwards. How'd you get here? She asked him, who are you? Harris replied. They were both standing in the kitchen. He had come in through the back door. It was snowing outside as it had been for the past week off and on. They said you couldn't get in or out. She said that's what they told me. She was standing at the sink. Dishes were in the water. Pounds were on the rainboard. Nothing much had been washed yet. Where are they, Harris asked?

He took off his coat and shook off the snow. You might have put done that on the porch, she said. I just finished the goddamn floor. He kicked the boot jack away from the wall and out where he could use it. They around, he asked. I don't know, she said. I don't know where they ever are. I've never been out here before, she paused. How'd you get here? You can always get in through the North Gate, Harris said. He pried off his boots and set them on the grate on the floor for us. The shelter belt goes along the road there and you can always get in and out that way. He looked at the coffee pot on the stove. They drank it all this morning, she said, and I'm not fixing anymore. She picked up a dish towel and dried off her hands and sat down on the chair at the kitchen table. On the window beside her there was an open space in the trees that circled the house and beyond that there was the white pasture. A line of cattle was moving north to south across the opening trotting. Harris sat down on one of the other chairs at the table.

Where you're from, he asked. Dodd City, she said. How long they had you here, he asked. A week and three days now. I was only supposed to be here a week and then they said we couldn't get out. Much less back to Dodd. God damn she said. She looked out the window. I said I'd take the bus from town and they didn't have to pay for it. They didn't have to drive me to Dodd. She turned back and looked at Harris. You work here or what, she asked. From now through through the summer he said, Blake's my uncle. Harris looked at his socks which were brown from being wet through his boots. He took them off and toast them on the floor for us. If they're wool, they'll stink, she said. That thing come on lately, Harris asked. It'll come on in a moment, she said. I'm surprised they turned it on so early, he said. I made them, she said. Good thing I did too. Our wood wound up chopping wood as well as clean house. He looked at her and then got up and made some coffee. All the time he made coffee, she didn't speak and neither did he. From outside they could hear both. They could both hear the sound of a pickup truck

and some men talking. She looked out the window. They're feeding those cattle again, she said. I see they put up quite a bit of, hey, Harris said. I wouldn't know, she said. They haven't exactly showed me around. She tapped her fingers on the table, looked at the dishes and took a deep breath. Say, will you drive me out of here and she asked Harris just to the bus station? If you can get in, she said, you can get out. Okay, now the reason I like that, that's, and I'm told I've, my number of people that writing teachers read that introduction to that story, to show students how to pose questions at the beginning of a story. And then the story answers all the questions. Who are all these people? And what it turns out is is that she is a woman who has a prostitute and she's come up from the warehouse in Dodged City and they brought her up. And they've, and that Harris who come in, she's, she's explained, she's,

the man who owns a ranch, she's uncle. And they finished with her. And instead of continuing to have sex with her, they're turning into a wife, which there's a story explained, she resents. She wants to go back to work in Dodged and not stay with these grubby men out there in the prairie and be a wife. And that all becomes clear as the story goes on. But without having all those questions at the beginning, which are unanswered, the relationship, the story then begins to explain the relationship. And in the way the story is a happy ending. Harris who takes pity on her and takes her, gets her out and so forth. So that's a story I like. But because of its subject, it doesn't get quite the play of speaking French in Kansas, which is after all about a young kid who learns about language and much more innocent, sweet story. Robert Day is the author of Speaking French in Kansas and the last cattle drive.

He joined us by phone from his home in Maryland. If you're just tuning in, we're looking at some of the books on the list of the 150 Kansas books, a list compiled by the center for the book at the state library of Kansas. Like Robert Day, my next guest also has two books on the list. Laura Mariarty's 2003 debut novel is The Center of Everything. Her 2009 novel is While I'm Falling. Welcome Laura. Thank you. First things first. Tell us about the center of everything. Well, it was a book I worked on for a long time and I wrote a lot of it while in Kansas. I got my undergraduate degree in social work here at KU and I had my social work internship at Dushan Clinic in Kansas City and some of the things that I observed there actually got me thinking and about the book. A lot of those experiences as social work student gave me the idea of this character of Evelyn, a little girl who grows up in

Kansas. And it's the story of her and her mother Tina and her grandmother Eileen. Tell us a little bit about those characters and where the story goes. Well, there's Evelyn is 10 and it's 1980 so I think the scene opens with Ronald Reagan accepting the Republican nomination and her mother is a single mother Tina who's kind of a hothead has made a lot of rash decisions and you know has this 10-year-old that she's taken care of and they're living in poverty and then a lot of times the grandmother will come from Wichita and the grandmother who Evelyn calls Eileen is also pretty young and she's a fundamentalist Christian who loves Ronald Reagan but is concerned because the he has six letters in each of his three names so fundamentalist names Armageddon 666 it's coming so there's a little bit of humor from Evelyn's perspective because she just hears all these things and takes them in and watches this clash between her young mother and her grandmother but they're both loving in different ways

but there are some real tensions between them that I try not to glaze over Laura I'm gonna ask you to read a scene from this book Evelyn has won her school science fair and she's chosen to go to Topeka to compete in the statewide science fair can you take her from there? Sure and she's in the car with with her mother and her grandmother and she's looking out the window and thinking as she's getting ready to go to the science fair I look out my window down at the line yellow lines whizzing under us in the middle of the highway there is nothing but fields of wheat on each side of the road their feathery tops swirling in the heat last year Miss Fairchild read some of my Antonia to us she said she wanted us to see Kansas and Nebraska the way it is in the book beautiful a bread basket that feeds so many people she said Kansas is beautiful if you look at it the right way and that we shouldn't believe it anything other people try to say about it the abundance of it she said spreading her arms wide and her Wednesday

dress as if she were holding something large I like living in Kansas not just because of the wheat but because it's right in the center if you look at the map of the world the United States is usually right in the middle and Kansas is in the middle of that so right here where we are maybe this very stretch of highway we are driving on is the exact center of the whole world what everything else spirals out from Miss Fairchild said no Evelyn that's just the way the map is made she said they could have just as easily put India in the middle or Africa for that matter she said she had seen maps that have a straw yet at the top and Greenland at the bottom and those maps are also right just in a different way she says the maps on her wall probably have has the United States in the middle because it was made in the United States I don't know I've never seen a map with Greenland at the bottom I think maybe Miss Fairchild is wrong and the United States really is in the center not just on maps but in real life because we are here on purpose I feel so lucky to live here right in the center and on purpose and Eileen says yes it's just another win of the many ways that we've been blessed that's a lovely image but it's also very disorienting if you try to think

what it's like to you know a map with with Greenland at the top and well I really see this novel as a coming of age intellectually and morally I thought there were a lot of coming of age books for young women that were physical and sexual and I really wanted to write one about a coming of age especially intellectual and I feel like here she's grappling with this idea that I think many adults especially perhaps maybe American adults struggle with which is this idea that that's just the way the map is made and you know there are different points and there is no center and that's just our very egocentric way of looking at the world and she's really kind of the way she thinks about that right now where she says oh no we really are in the center I think it's challenged throughout the book and she's able to see a larger picture by the end. Laura at one point Evelyn describes her relationship with her mom Tina who as you've said is making some really bad choices along the way Evelyn describes almost a black line

yeah between the two of them and her sense of separating from her mom yeah she really tries to draw a line and say that is you this is me and for a while you know Evelyn's a little zealous like she really becomes this far more fundamentalist than Eileen and I think it's because she grows up in this very shaky household where she doesn't always know what's going to happen for one day to the next and her sense of security isn't very strong always when she's living with her mother and so she does make this line you know that's you this is me I'm going to heaven you're not you're bad I'm good and I think that's true of human nature in general is when people get really threatened either economically or in any situation where they feel threatened they're more likely to make those huge distinctions them me them us us against them and she makes she even says it's like the line on a map you know you are you and I am me and she draws that line between herself and her mother which also gets challenged throughout the book that sense of separation between a daughter and her mother is also a really strong theme in your other book on the Kansas 150 list and that's your 2009 novel

while I'm falling tell us a little bit about that storyline well that is set more in Lawrence and the Kansas City area and so I always wanted to write a book in Lawrence I don't think this is my Lawrence novel because it's not truly Lawrence yet you know but it's KU Veronica is a 20-year-old pre-med student and then her mother and father live in the Kansas City area I was thinking they live in like Lee Wood or Latham and they've always done pretty well you know everything's always been fun but then they get a horrible divorce right as as Veronica's in her junior year and although Veronica I don't think at this early in the novel understands the huge economic ramifications of this divorce and also the emotional you know and she does understand that her family is over as she knew it but I don't think she knew what was going on underneath in her parents' marriage her mother has been one of those people who's very sacrificing for the family you know kind of puts everybody before her all the time all the time

and Veronica really looked up to her but now as Veronica herself is making life choices about what is she going to major and how important is money going to be to her should she move in with this boyfriend these little decisions that can add up later in life to very serious consequences especially economically she's watching her mother sort of reap whatever she sowed even though she's done that through kindness and so there's a lot of distancing going on there because I think you go through a stage well you know if your mother is falling and that's the name of the book while I'm falling her mother is free falling in this book and Veronica is definitely at first trying to distance her even though her mother has been this this wonderful mother to her because she's scared of it happening to her so you're right it's another line line in the sand can I have you read an excerpt from from that book while I'm falling sure okay maybe you can set it up a little bit okay so this is very early on in the book and Veronica doesn't know everything going on with her mother she just knows that there's been this

divorce and her mother's looking more dishevelled and her mother's like working in a mall now and she's Veronica herself is very ambitious and she's going to medical school and she's taking organic chemistry and she's got a study and work all the time and her mother is wanting her to take her out to dinner so in this in this scene the mother has just taken her out for dinner and she's dropping her off at the door in which I call Tweet Hall but it's really McCollum and she's getting ready to drop Veronica off okay so she says don't forget your leftovers she nodded at the paper box of chicken satay but honey if you don't have a refrigerator you can put that in you should probably just throw it away you don't want to mess with food poisoning gotcha I stepped out of the van with the box she reached for my sleeve I turned back honey her face was pale in the interior light I just want you to know that she kept her hand on the sleeve holding me there I know I'm a little bit maybe kind of a mess right now but I still love you very much I'm still here for you for just a moment it felt like before when she was just my mother her gaze so focused in full of love and worry for me

but even now that she was smiling at me and saying these nice words I could see that something wasn't right or at least not the same my eyes moved over her face in a slow spiral she'd stopped getting her hair done getting it highlighted whatever she used to do to it I could see strands of gray even in the semi-darkness of her car I said nothing I didn't want to interrupt her I wanted to believe that what she was saying was true and maybe I don't understand the way your test will be hard but I'm still rooting for you I want you to do great she squeezed my arm and smiled you've got your whole life in front of you I just want you to make good decisions it's so important for you to make good decisions right now I nodded my eyes on hers her eyes at least had not changed and so I made certain they were the last thing I noticed before I shut the door when I got to the dorms front entrance I could still hear the idling engine of her van whenever she dropped me off after dark she always waited headlight shining until I was safely inside that's Laura Marriardi reading from her 2009 novel while I'm falling that book and her 2003 novel the center of everything

were named among the 150 best Kansas books by the Kansas Center for the Book thanks Laura thank you so much if mystery is more to your liking there are several books for you on the list including our next two featured books in just a minute we'll hear from Sarah Peretzky author of Bleeding Kansas as well as the V.I. Warshowski detective novels but first the Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Picard I had a chance to visit with Nancy Picard shortly after the Virgin of Small Plains was selected for the State Library's Kansas Reads program back in 2008 the Virgin of Small Plains is a mystery set in the Flint Hills of Kansas but where exactly is itself a bit of a mystery people have come up to me people from the Flint Hills because Small Plains is in the Flint Hills and they've said is this my town and I have to tell them it's no real town although it's loosely based on Council Grove on Marion and Cottonwood Falls

if Small Plains really existed you would find it on 177 between Manhattan and Council Grove I actually got out my map last night and tried to plot out exactly where it was well you're not the first person to do that people have walked up to me with maps and said show me where it is and the Virgin of Small Plains as reference in the title is an unknown young woman who dies just outside town tell us about the Virgin and the legend that springs up from her death I can't tell you too much for fear giving away portions of the plot but I can tell you that I've always been fascinated with the idea that legends do grow up around murder victims sometimes and particularly if their body has not been identified and I've also been really interested by the fact that when something like that happens when there's an unidentified murder victim frequently a community takes that unknown victim into their heart and it becomes really important to the community to find out who that person was and a kind of personal connection grows up between some people in the community

and the victim and although that's not exactly descriptive of what happens in the Virgin of Small Plains it's fairly typical of how an idea will morph into something that I can use usually it comes from some some happening that haunts me in some way and eventually the haunting results in and a version of what originally inspired me and so a lot of different things went into creating the Virgin of Small Plains but since you asked for a description I will say that I actually think you described her pretty well she she is an unidentified young woman and she is murdered and a legend does grow up around her grave the legend being that she can help people who ask for help the book opens in a cemetery it ends in a cemetery and much of what transpires in the book either takes place in the cemetery or about the cemetery to me it almost seems like it's a place of community and people go to the graves and talk to their friends just as I'm talking to you across this table I think that in this country and in other

countries actually there's a long history of cemeteries being places for social gatherings and a century or two or three ago it used to be fairly common for families to go to cemeteries on Sundays and they'd even have picnics there and they'd have lunch on the grass and it became a place for social gatherings for sure I don't think we do quite as much of that now but I do think you're right that it is a place of community gathering and in its own strange way it can be kind of comforting if you're from small town and your your family's been there for a long time because it's proof of your roots in that town but I have to tell you something really funny sometimes it takes readers to tell a writer what you've done in your book and again you've said something that nobody's ever said before which you pointed out that the book starts with the cemetery ends with the cemetery and there's an important scene in the middle of the book do you know that I never realized that I didn't plan that really okay this is sort of amazing to me I mean you're absolutely right of course and the whole thing is kind of

anchored down by these cemetery scenes isn't it well thanks so much for that improvement you're welcome just one of those services I'm happy to survive on the subject of cemeteries I'd like to go to the passage involving Katie Washington Katie's a young woman who is dying of cancer and she goes to the small plain cemeteries seeking a miracle from the virgin let's hear that passage the air had gone a greenish yellow even in the darkness she could detect the change in color the coming vacuum the impending stillness in the center under the darkest part of the storm there was enough light to be able to watch the cloud formations they curled they stabbed the air beneath them they began to rotate and then she saw the tornado a few hundred yards away without thinking hardly knowing what she was doing and even less why she was doing it the girl flung open her door against the rain it was hailing now small hard rough balls that

pelted her weakened body and would have hurt if she had been capable of feeling anything at that moment except the overwhelming desire to run to the top of the hill to meet the storm she stumbled and felt her hands and knees on the dirt road that was turning to mud with the rain and hail pelting her back and the wind pushing at her like abusive hands she crawled toward the virgin's grave when she reached it she turned over and laid spread eagle her face to the clouds all around her the branches of the trees danced and the trees themselves leaned one way and then the other there was a howling all around her and then there was a roaring like a train coming closer to her she felt like a damsel tied to their tracks but that's how she had felt for months in the path of the cancer that was killing her this was no different no one could rescue her this was her third go-round with chemotherapy for her brain tumors each of the first two times she had known she would lick it

when the third diagnosis came in she lost the will to fight it wasn't working anymore nothing was working anymore she was in pain a lot of the time and so very ill now from under the black black oily layer of clouds she watched the funnel form high in the air watched it dip down once watched it rise back up again always moving in her direction when it traveled directly over her it was 100 feet wide at the tip she gazed up directly into the mouth of it where she could see the revolution of the air and things objects whirling around inside of it the roar was deafening and terrifying she felt her whole body being picked up as if she were levitating and then being laid back down and then some of the things inside of the funnel began to fall on her she closed her eyes expecting to be killed by them but they fell lightly atop her and all around her when she opened her eyes she discovered she was covered with flowers

that's an excerpt from the Virgin of Small Plains written by Nancy Picard of Miriam Kansas and read by Stephanie Drahozel mystery writer Sarah Peretzky is best known for her best-selling V.I. War Shosky detective stories but in her 2008 novel Bleeding Kansas Peretzky leaves the character of V.I. behind in Chicago and sets this book in Douglas County, Kansas Sarah Peretzky talks about her book Bleeding Kansas and growing up outside Lawrence in this reading she gave at the Lawrence Art Center in January 2008 well I've been on the road around the country with Bleeding Kansas since January 2nd and as my tour winds down I'm finally returning to the scene of the crime during the month that I've been in such amazing cities as Houston, Phoenix and Madison, Wisconsin I've had email messages from any number of Lorentzians

past and present who say that they've seen themselves or D.A. Vern Miller or Sheriff Rex Johnson in the characters of Elaine Logan or Arnie Shapen or even Arnie's perfect red heifer Nassie I know that it's futile for me to say that all of these characters are figments of my imagination that the only real person any of them is based on is me because they represent different aspects of my own personality as my brother Jonathan explained to me yesterday we are all of us as readers bring our own lives and experiences to what we read so that in a very real way we are always present in someone else's novel I do understand that sort of anyway but really everyone in Bleeding Kansas is made up of course some of the things in the novel are reality based including the old free mantle Peretsky Gilmore House

I also benefited greatly from John and Karen Pendleton's willingness to open their farm to me whether I got very many details right about farming is certainly open to question but I came away from my time with them much impressed by not just the constant round of work but the amount of creative thinking that has to go into successful farming thanks to Karen I am a proud honorary member of the Mettelock chapter of 4-H I based all of Laura Grelier's 4-H project somewhat I saw this very impressive bunch of kids doing for the fair I couldn't make a desk I couldn't identify the 3000 beetles of northeastern Kansas I couldn't build a raft out of old discarded plastic water bottles but those are just a few of the things that my fellow chapter mates have been doing

the shapens in the Grelier's the two farm families who make up the heart of my story occupy an extra half mile of land that I added between Lawrence and Udora now I did want Putnam my publishers to include a map of Douglas County in the in the overleaf but they refuse to add to the expense of printing the book by doing that detailed cartography especially since it would have meant freehand drawing in the extra half mile now the the Grelier's my sort of main family my hero family they do crops but the shapens are dairy farmers and I did spend a very small amount of time on an organic dairy farm near Topeka when I was 11 I read Dracula this book completely terrified me I didn't I think that was the start of my lifelong hobby of insomnia it was

many many many nights before I slept I kept patrolling the house looking outside for vampires and as you may know vampires can take the form of wolves and then they'll jump through your window break the glass and then they'll turn back into vampires in such a blood well one night around two in the morning as I was patrolling the perimeter I looked out and there they were wolves in the back garden I screamed really loudly and woke both parents and four brothers who all came running and looked out and they were actually cows the famous vampire cows of Douglas County so the neighbor's cows had knocked over the fence and they were eating my mother's corn I have to confess that someone who cannot tell the difference between a wolf and a cow is probably not ideally

equipped to write about a dairy farm but I gave it my best shot the shapens as I said are dairy farmers and one part of the novel is the perfect red heifer they have on their farm a heifer that's needed to fulfill prophecies about Jesus return given I think in the book of Revelation a different writer than me Dan Brown for instance would have this heifer bleating actual prophecies from Isaiah or even Mary Magdalene and I would be making a billion dollars from this book as Raymond Chandler put it it's always a question of who the writer is and what we have in us to write with in my novel the work of my hands I wanted to explore the landscape of my childhood both the interior and the exterior a book like this couldn't take place in

Chicago there's no place for vi or shofsky the sharp-tongued risk-taking problem solver in the world of the shapens and the grelliers there's no room for any outsider there especially not one as eccentric as Gina Herring the Wicken let alone of vi I certainly wouldn't be able to have bonfires in Chicago or a perfect red heifer nor could I have the winter wheat coming to life I needed to return to my childhood to be able to write about Jim and Susan Grellier to write about land and the cycle of life and death it presents to us the winter wheat had broken dormancy and was starting to grow all week a pale green had shimmered under the brown tufts barely visible like a shy girl at a school dance don't look at me I'm here this morning though the whole field was suddenly alive

the sky was still dark barely paler than the land beneath it but Jim could smell the greenness of the plants a fresh tang like lime rising from the land when he bent to feel the stalks they were supple and soft as bird down between his fingers he heard footsteps wickering through the grass and then Susan knelt beside him like him she bent to feel soil and roots it smells like spring they squatted for a time without speaking all the poetry about spring that Lara was studying for her English class April is the cruelest month blossom by blossom the spring begins now the April with his showers sweet and Lara's own earnest clumsy lines that celebrated the coming blue skies and pink roses why did no one write a poem about the winter wheat coming to life

Susan took a deep breath Jim I'm sorry about the farm I'm sorry you had to sell the river section and that you had to sell it for Arnie to head to sell it to Arnie I'm sorry for letting you down for being the reason you had to do it he put his finger over her lips listen the bobelinks were calling to each other their long line of song drowning the meadowlarks the bobelinks had come back from South America a week ago as they had every spring for 20,000 years and were working in earnest on their nests they sailed around Jim and Susan in the dark paying no more attention to the humans and to the silos across the field in the east a faint stain of pink heralded the rising sun thank you very much that's mystery writer Sarah Peretzky

reading from her 2008 novel bleeding Kansas the 150 best Kansas books list also includes a number of nonfiction books including our next selection a Kansas year is a collection of photographs and essays from wildlife photographer Mike Blair I interviewed Mike Blair by phone shortly after a Kansas year was selected as a Kansas notable book for 2010 this is not meant to be a photography book but what I have is 150 illustrative photographs that kind of helped tell the story of different things that happened seasonally in a Kansas year so you start in January just give us an idea sort of how you worked your way through the year and how you came up with this collection of photographs well a lot of people know me as a wildlife photographer for Kansas wildlife in parks and of course I'm doing this project totally on my own I do a lot of freelancing as well but

in my many years of experience about 30 now as an outdoor and nature photographer in Kansas I have come to realize that at any time during a Kansas year the things that you see and hear and experience are things that tell us almost precisely at what point of the year that we're at so the whole premise of the book was to to kind of draw people's attention to just look around us and and learn and observe more about the Kansas outdoors and how it relates to us on a seasonal basis Mike the photographs in this book are are gorgeous but one thing that surprised me was it's not just a book of photography it's also your essays about what was happening or what you captured in each photograph you know they say a picture is worth a thousand words and that's really true as as I look at this book myself right now and look at any picture there you know you could write a whole book about any one of those things but but the photograph really is kind of a snapshot of what was actually going

on and then the flavors of those things are what you put down in the words I almost hate to ask you this but do you have a favorite photograph in the book? That would be you know that would be hard to to say there's there's a lot of photographs in there that that are kind of noteworthy to me I guess one of the I just did a big program with the Great Plains Nature Center last night and I showed the picture of the Bobcat crossing where a Bobcat crossed a log and I actually set that up I had a concept in mind with a trail camera and it took me about three and a half months or three months to get that picture the way I wanted it and that was very frustrating I thought I'd be able to get it within a week or so and and the cat just kept beating me it cut his head off it cut his rump off I he walked straight away from me and I just get his hind quarters and I kept trying over and over again and that's not my favorite picture but that certainly comes to mind as one of the shots that you know kind of makes me smile when I think about it I had to work pretty hard

to get that shot but my favorite pictures are always those that showed the drama of of something I've got a picture called Eagle Joust I guess a little segment in the book called Eagle Joust where a bald eagle made a shot kind of a warning aerial shot at a crow that had been hassling him and that that moment of drama that you see is unexpected and it's always fun to see that kind of stuff those are that's the frosting on the cake every time when you get to see not only the eagle but to get to see him do something you know unexpected that you know that makes the moment special Mike could I have you turned to February 8th there's a photograph here that really caught my attention yes a snow goose interestingly enough you know and this was something that I didn't notice as the photographer when I was shooting this picture there was a lot of geese coming in I was in a blind natural situation there

but later in the photograph when I was looking at them in detail I saw that here was a bird that had a club leg for whatever reason and the bird had healed up normally on one side he's got the normal big webbed foot and on the other side he's got just like a chicken bone hanging down right there and he'd he'd healed up completely interesting to me that as geese normally have to run along the water surface to take off he seemed to have absolutely no problem swimming around he didn't swim off kilter he didn't he didn't have any trouble taking flight he operated just as normally as anything else and the premise of that story was that unlike us who are blessed to have doctors and medical help when a wild animal has an injury which can happen in so many different ways they've got to just be able to live through it and survive and a lot of times they do and go on normally about their business

you know Mike I'll admit that I am a kind of an indoor person but reading through your book it really made me think I need to get outdoors more I appreciate you saying that Kay and I've heard that many many times from people that have read my book now they said you know there's so much out there that we never get to go see or never take the time to go see and you don't have to go to the Hinderlands to see these things you can go to a city park you can go out in your backyard you know that I've got one entry in here that talks about a leaf scar on a black walnut tree and when you look at that it looks just like a monkey face and when you look at it close up as I did with a macro lens on my camera there's this odd monkey face look on this twig that's very very striking and there's eyes and there's a mouth and those the eyes in the mouth are actually vascular bundle scars they're called and those are the little pipelines that carry the sap

and nutrition from the roots to the leaves of the plant and back and and so all of these details in nature are right around us and there's so much you know if you're on a nature walk with the naturalist this is always fun because they point these kinds of things out to people you know that no no ordinarily have any idea they're passing by such great stories that are all around us and it's just simply the fact that most of us are busy and we just don't know what to look for and we don't know what we see when we see it so the book you know tries to explain some of those things and and it really does try to encourage people to look at the beauty of this state you know everybody laughs at Kansas and makes fun of it but as a nature photographer I can't think of a state that I'd rather work in that's got to tremendous diversity and beauty that we do here but you kind of have to grow to appreciate it. I've been visiting with wildlife

photographer Mike Blair his collection of photographs and essays a Kansas year was published in 2009 by the University Press of Kansas. We closed today's program on the 150 best Kansas books with a collection of poetry. To the stars Kansas Poets of the Add Astro Poetry Project was edited by former Kansas Poet Laureate Denise Lowe. Denise what exactly is the Add Astro Poetry Project? As Poet Laureate of Kansas 2007 to 2009 I collected a series of poems and then wrote explanations of them and biographies a little bit about the poet all to be contained on one page so that these could be printed out and posted or used in schools as they were and then at the end of the two years I collected what I had into book form. How did you select what

poets and which poetry made it into your collection? Well I feel bad because there are many many good poets that I just ran out of time and energy because I could have doubled the size. But I started thinking I would do a lot of historic poets and I started with Langston Hughes and William Stafford and Gordon Parks and then as the project evolved I began to be more committed to making people aware of contemporary poets around them and so then I kind of neglected there needs to be a second volume of the pre 1990 you know poets and you know I started to just focus on living poets but I did try to select people who had at least one published book preferably to some longevity and I wanted the book to not be self-published

somebody who had some stature reviews of their work and involvement in the writing community. Now I know better than to ask you if you have a favorite or two but I'm I'm hoping you can pick out one or two that you'll read for me today. Okay okay one of my favorite characters in Kansas is a Chicago-born guy Albert Goldbarth at Wichita State who's lived here so long now. Again I had to think about what about these immigrant cancens. He's been at Wichita State over 20 years and I think he if you can survive the climate that long you deserve to be called cancun and so he is one of the most celebrated poets of our day he's won every kind of award you can imagine including the National Book Award,

National Book Critics Circle Award and so forth and I'd like to read you an excerpt from his poem Wings. I always wondered why they called them Wings. Perhaps because somebody always waited and shadow in them with a rope with a rope like a great braided nerve and while some sweet singing or bloody melee completely filled the central light this person would raise or lower at the god. It's summer hard summer the land enameled. I find the bird already half dismantled by ants the front half it's flying steadily into the other world so needs to be this still. Do I mumble? Yes. Do I actually pray? Yes. Yes but not for the bird. When we love enough people a bird is a

rehearsal. That's lovely. Isn't that amazing? Pick another one for me okay. You know another wonderful poet that is in our midst and and I celebrate him anytime I can is Kenna Thurby. He just won a wonderful prize the Shelley prize it's you know just a huge national honor but this is a poem for Ed Dorn to April 1929 to 10 December 1999. In the far back past year animals have lined up in lament dog goat pony horse and beyond them a cow in its astronomical agility a real dog and pony show

giving tribute back on their hind legs musicians at the window lacking the cock his call the show of the world along the fence rose in with the hedge apples the night winter cray bushes are in bloom the cray what are they that is their rhyme that's Denise Lowe former poet laureate of Kansas reading from to the stars the ad astropoetry project Denise Lowe's 1988 book Starwater is also on the list of the 150 best Kansas books thanks Denise you bet to the stars a Kansas year bleeding Kansas the version of small planes while I'm falling the center of everything speaking French in Kansas the last cattle drive we barely made a dent in the 150 best Kansas books

compiled by the Kansas Center for the book at the State Library of Kansas I'm Kay McIntyre I'll be back next week with more selections from the list you can find the entire list of books at the State Library's website kslib.info or by entering 150 best Kansas books in your favorite search engine by the way the books are not ranked rather they're listed in alphabetical order by book title I hope you've enjoyed this look at some of the best Kansas books if you have comments or questions about tonight's program let us know on KPR's Facebook page or send me an email my address is kay McIntyre at keu.edu that's k-m-c-i-n-t-y-r-e at keu.edu and do join me next week for part two of the 150 best Kansas books KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio

at the University of Kansas next time on KPR presents the 150 best Kansas books I'm Kay McIntyre join me eight o'clock Sunday evening for this two-part series on the best books about Kansas maybe this very stretch of highway we are driving on is the exact center of the whole world what everything else spirals out from Miss Fairchild said no Evelyn that's just the way the map is made the air had gone a greenish yellow even in the darkness she could detect the change in color the coming vacuum the impending stillness in the center these weren't mark cattle this wasn't my ranch I had nothing to lose if the tubules got 250 steers into the middle of Kansas City and I scattered all over the place all the poetry about spring that Lara was studying for her English class

April is the cruelest month blossom by blossom the spring begins why did no one write a poem about the winter wheat coming to life KPR presents the 150 best Kansas books eight o'clock Sunday evening on Kansas Public Radio