Kansas Notable Books, Part One

i know just in time for your summer reading some of the best books like kansans for about kansas i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr reasons that kansas notable books each year the state library of kansas selection fifteen books as kansas notables the two thousand fifteen kansans notable winners will be announced later this month first we'll look back at some of last year's winners the first of a two part series with the authors of fiction nonfiction young adult literature and more will even be giving away copies of many of the kansas notable books later this hour stay tuned to find out how you can enter a chance to win our first ken's is notable book is bleeding kansas leaving missouri the long civil war on the border it's a collection of essays co edited by diane moody berg of the university of missouri kansas city and jonathan earle formerly of the university of kansas history

department and director of the k u honors program now dean of the honors college at louisiana state university i had a chance to visit with that girl while he was still at play you most of us are pretty familiar with the phrase bleeding kansas prairie bleeding missouri yeah that's not really a thing but the point of the book and actually this is as the title suggested by our editor at the university press of kansas fred woodard who just retired this year after a long and distinguished career publishing books about about kansas that are our essays really showed that the that both sides of the border experienced this this brother on brother total warfare that reached into people's homes so he's just wonder we make up a phrase and from that you know i thought work week and the splitting missouri so this book actually came out of a conference that was held a couple years ago a greater kansas republican lever how did that come about well my co editor diane ed

burke arm she and i the same age and when you allow the same people when she came to counter to teach history at you and kc and she gave me a call and we realized that she worked on missouri history in the south and i worked on antebellum political history in the north and we'd never met we haven't we haven't been to the same academic meetings we hadn't published using girls and we were joking that this is the problem with our region we have all these people working on this period in real cancer missouri but we don't know each other we don't exchange work and so is it would it be fun if we all got together and worked shopped some papers and really learn from each other and that's that's what the academic enterprise is ultimately all about and we actually met twice we met are here to pay you a call center in the spring of two thousand eleven and spent two days all the all the contributors workshop in her essays and really interrogate each other about why we thought this was true what we could look at over another archive in topeka

or colombia or store springfield missouri and then we met again in the fall of twenty eleven at this big public conference in kansas city at the public library and katie blew our minds three hundred people were there for the whole thing and that just doesn't happen when professors present their work like yours you're talking to a room of ten wins so hot so we knew we had something that would that had real public history contrast going on here so that's why we thought the world might be willing to accept another co edited historical volume a phrase that is used in the bike around that i wasn't really familiar with is sound on the deuce yes tell me what that means and do you know where that phrase comes from the arm sound of the goose was code to find out if you were it tore correct on the issue of slavery kansas territory it's like i always had a saying it feel about slavery you could say it it sound on the do's and being sound on the disney

you're on the pro wrestling or the lawn order signed one thing the professor edison's essay tells us is that you know these people who were not on what we would now consider the wrong side of history the pro slavery side they thought they were fighting to make kansas territory a lawful orderly place they thought that these these outside agitators who hated slavery coming from new england and m being harmed by henry ward beecher near death of these people were the dis organizers were that were the dangerous terrorists so i love that she gave us that perspective on our people that sometimes get written off because they were they were incorrect probably my favorite thing about reading this book is it really gave you a different perspective on what it's like to live in a territory in a time of transition where no one side is following the rules even if they're the wrong roles as history writes them verses but people who are rebelling against those rules and going out friday established

political system to do so that's where we put them in of course the rules were that slavery was accepted and ok and legal so if you start with the assumption that that that rule is just wrong and the scene that means you can take a lot of other actions now on the other side labor this way on don't feel so sorry for those pro slavery just as they are the ones who i think in the ad gets added up atrocities amendment bad acts in kansas territory before statehood bid at the committee lot more they'd they still are more elections they had almost a monopoly on violence before you know the beaches bibles butcher shops carbines arrived in concrete smart books they did more bad things before john brown and his friends arrived on the scene and later eating fifties certain academic what do you think learning the missouri side of this what does that land you here in cannes and were first just the casual reader of kansas history when what do we gain by hearing about other side i thank you for a scene

and i love that question i think a lot of us in kansas in towns like lawrence in topeka that are very proud of our anti slavery heritage we sometimes forget that that wasn't all all kansans weren't racial egalitarian who hated slavery in all missourians warrant white supremacist secessionists who believed in the lost cause and what i learned doing this book is that if both sides were so much more complicated so i think learning the missouri side for me as a not a southern historian i have never stood in missouri before before this book i learned about their concerns and how they really felt odd even example if they felt that if kansas entered the union as a free state in the team fifties and finally to sixty one that their property will be worthless that'll be like theft because the state would be surrounding three sides by freed territory all a human's property slavery have to do is get out and get out of state and they be free and they had they had a good point in a horrible world where slavery was was the norm

they really did want to join the confederacy but one thing that abraham lincoln spent a lot of time in ever doing is making sure that the border states of maryland and missouri in kentucky state in the united states a level don't know that that missouri was never part of the confederacy although a lot of missourians sure would've liked to have been a lot of the guerilla warfare is because unlike arkansas mike georgia it was not a four the country was part of the united states so people who didn't like that situation in missouri decided to take matters into their hands you just brought up abraham lincoln and i want to touch on a play that you mentioned in your essay in this book if i went west i think i would go to kansas i'm a quote year without kansas abraham lincoln would never been president of the united states moreover if not for kansas abraham lincoln would not just have lost the eighteen sixty presidential election he wouldn't even a better candidate or at a national political figure i tried to prove the affair but it lincoln

had one term in congress and he was not a very distinguished we did congressman from central illinois and he got he tried to convince the constituents back home to send him back and they didn't even re nominated that's how lousy a congressman he was so he rallied and it did what he out what he did best he went home to springfield and became a crackerjack lawyer he was the guy you want to hire a few if you want to win a case in court what brings him back into the national spotlight is the issue of kansas a mother can dish should be free or slave an innately forties when lincoln the congressman ed he could give a resounding speeches pose on the tariff or on tax rates or on corporations but you know who cares you on the slavery issue crystallize things for him and for a lot of other republicans and he had a a kind of lying on it that that really was a powerful political tool he had ways of talking of slavery that warn about sin and and redemption they were about how

founders our founders were more anti slavery pro slavery that that slave holders were were breaking the law and work were unfairly dominating the federal government so called the slave power and the whole issue of can this brings lincoln back into politics and he speaks all over the north about kansas and how it should be a freeze territory in a free state ultimately and he came here and self in the late fall of eighteen fifty nine to try to test the political waters and hone some of these rhetorical strategies for for running for national office so tell us about his visit to kansas and eighteen fifty nine yeah it's something that i didn't know about till i moved here and people would say so what about lincoln when he was in kansas i never i never knew a gamer so i have i play with his id and in the essay that there's a lot there's kansas the idea which lincoln lincoln had been thinking about for the past six years and speaking about almost nonstop and then there's like there's kansas the place where lincoln finally did come and visit and he visited us

several towns in northeastern kansas during december making fifty nine he was invited by a cousin of his mother who was a newspaperman in leavenworth and he gave some speeches that when i read them they've sounded really familiar to me and they sound familiar to me because he's trying out in in places like leavenworth harm and pakistan but some of the same things that are in his much more famous cooper union address from the winter tick and sixty one this is famously where lincoln he went into the library and researched all the constitutional convention notes and all of the federalist papers in all of the ideas the founders him and came up with this idea that very few people believed at the time that no i think that that constitutes an anti slavery duck and most people most publishers that was a michael quote william lloyd garrison at a compact with scene he'd like pastiche of lincoln loved the constitution in and try out some of those ideas and i loved seeing that there was a kansas origin of this very famous speech on this very famous candidate a lot of the essays in your book are pretty heavy

historical going back over an advance from a long long time ago you end this book and a kind of lighthearted essay from jennifer a webber okay you who writes about the border war between it kansas and missouri and how that played in to college sports or leave them mythology right has played in the cards for its years the fertility and press remember his essay shows that this to stop this car but it didn't end in a king sixty five or even in their early twenties and you have another essay that's when my fear it's not the kwan trolls raiders we're used to happen in western missouri all the way into the twenties these guys who who burned our town the ground who who who raped and pillaged him were the worst people on the planet actually got celebrated forty miles away from where we're sitting right now every year on the anniversary of the day and confessor weber's essay shows how when most people in our region talk about the border where they think about k u m u football and basketball and of course now alas with

missouri's defection to the sec we don't have that to look for twenty more but what the great rivalries and the reason why my phone use to ring every every time a zoo in and pay you played to hear the historical background there's not a historical beef between ohio state and michigan are or princeton records appears right but there is this palpable sense that missouri kansas he each other and you know we have coach pham bro who gave those resoundingly and awe inspiring i guess speeches and water and so what what danny webber or michael uk you found is that this is kind of manufactured in the eighties a nationally known hundred and let's be clear nineteen eighteen it is that he did not actually think you know she looked at other sources you might've found something a little different to the latino do claim remember hating misery but i i love the way she's she frames her demons as how this is more of the twentieth century late twentieth century concoction of our love of drumming up a sports rivalry but i mean i i i have to admit i feel i don't feel the taste eight the way i feel about misery and i'm a

kansas fan and there's there's a historical reason for that i can take a state there they're part of team kansas jonathan thank you so much for coming in today and seventy one that's jonathan earle co editor of bleeding kansas bleeding misery the long civil war on the border this collection of essays is the first of our cancers notable books for today books by kansans or about kansas selected by the state library sticking with history our second kansas notable book looks at another war and the long journey from war torn europe to lawrence kansas needle in the bone is the true story of two men who grew up in poland during world war two and their friendship decades later in lawrence their story is told by karen miriam goldberg as a former poet laureate and distinguished author karan has been a frequent guest on kbr present for care and as always it's lovely to see you again

thank you so much for having me today it's great to be back in the studio neil on the bone tells the story of two gentlemen i don't jump ahead that to dominate and that at the university of kansas but i don't start out their story back in the nineteen thirties tell me about lee friedman and his story lew freedman a was born in wage poland and he was part of that a very big extended family and when poland was invaded omelet was only about nine years old he was born nineteen thirty and his family had to go on quite a journey to try to stay alive including several gatos landing eventually at the warsaw ghetto right after the first wave of the warsaw uprising and before the second more famous uprising slash massacre in the ghetto he was also in six

concentration camps and on three death marches and out of a very large and loving extended family only he and his brother survived it won the band tells a story willie louis freedman but it also tells the story of you aren't like ok that's eight year old yasin on any art also on lives in lawrence and he had a very similar story that mirrored lose but from a very different angle yard grew up i'm catholic in poland and many many polls were catholic and also as part of the polish gentry his mother came from old money his father came from new money and when he was sixteen shortly after the warsaw uprising he decided to start his own army his own underground army his family then found out and that's when he discovered that his family business was the polish underground one of his uncles was basically the president of the underground the whole

underground government another was the treasure his mother was a lieutenant his aunt was involved many family members were involved say york went through and his own tales of very close calls of almost been killed again and again first in the warsaw uprising which happened to your after the warsaw ghetto uprising and later as a pr debbie you and i'm escaping from pierre debbie you camps and marches and being re caught and finally making his way to freedom and he also found out that a good number of his extended family were killed in the war how did you decide to write their story or why do you think their story was one that needed to be told i thought it was a remarkable story because it wasn't just the story of a holocaust survivor it was also the story of a holocaust survivor his best friend was a polish resistance

fighter both these men had not only lost so much of their extended family but the entire worlds in which they grew up their culture and their traditions that land and cities where they lived were completely dissolved away and here they ended up in the middle of america in lawrence kansas and they found each other and i thought that was remarkable i also thought it was remarkable what we might call in them in yiddish their chutzpah there their kind of courage and vitality and how they looked at life what they made of life in remaking they're in their whole existence and how it all happened is we had a brunch we were eating bland says for years i had told lew in your act you need to write their story if you're ready to write about i'll help you and i knew they were interested but i resist and offering to

write it i had three teenagers at the time you know i had trouble even getting the dishes done it didn't seem like i could write a book about the holocaust and world war two but as we're eating glances all of a sudden it just came out of my mouth if you want all right your story and i realized what i said and i stopped myself and said ok think about it we can call me anna week later lou called and said yes and yard his into and then we began four years of interviews and looking over interviews and i had always read a lot about the holocaust in world war two but then i really dove into dozens and dozens of books and articles and websites and long talks with them all and in the hands it was absolutely the right thing to do at the right time so often we dont know that in our lives to wear their but shortly after the final draft of the book was in production more out of your ex wife died

suddenly of heart arrhythmia come january twenty four of two thousand eleven and a year later right before the book came out lou died from metastasized cancer and amazingly enough on the exact date january twenty fourth two thousand twelfth best friends and they each left this earth on the same day a year apart so had i waited i would not have been able to write the story there's a lesson there for all of us tell me about the name of the book needle in the bone you know what i would call the but as i was writing it but i knew that at some point one of the guys would say something here and it would all spark an eye with the way i interviewed them as i go their house once a week for an hour to an i was really touched by this they would always like to wrestle a really nice button down shirt and that they have ice water for me and sometimes little snacks may be waiting there and i you know really excited i'd be really excited and we would have this great talk and one

time i was interviewing lou and he told me about what happened in his first concentration camp it was a sub camp of my director and i should point out something i didn't know before i wrote the book there were thousands of concentration camps and sub camps of sub camps of sub camps and some i'd done it was a very large complex and the small camp boots an n bd see why i am was kind of almost off the map and the commander in charge ran a gold ring adult fights fbi axe fights was incredibly sadistic and he was pretty much left to his own devices by the nazis at the time and what he would do is he would blow a whistle and all the prisoners had to run outside stand very still for hours in the middle of the night follow fights with their eyes but not move their bodies if they didn't watch and carefully or if they moved it all he shot them

and so one night the whistle blows twelve year old lew freedman jumps out of his bunk and he lands on something seriously shark if he had been down to pull it out he would've been shot so he runs outside and stands there in the middle of this courtyard and just i am bear is the pain one house somehow or another makes it through that night he didn't go to the infirmary because regularly the nineties would come and kill everybody in the infirmary and after three or for weeks the pain dissipate it and as the war went on he forgot about it but in the early nineteen fifties he was walking in new jersey i'm obviously have to get in this country and he i am a speeding car just sent a pebble in it hit his ankle and he went and got an extreme he found out he had a needle about three inches

long batted in the bone of his heel and they could remove that anymore the body makes a protective shield and i thought you soon as you tell me that i said we have the title for buckets needle in melbourne because when you survive something like the holocaust or the polish resistance in world war two when you lose your entire universe of everything that makes you everything that that holds you you will always have a needle on the bone but you can still survive your body your psyche or make a protective shield can i have you read an excerpt from the lies i'd be happy to our victory the few paragraphs when the very first page none of you should be here says mora i cook a bitch as she fills her plate with like as our annual hanukkah party when i went to the wedding of lou and jane friedman says children all i could think was

none of you should be here it was not hitler's plan but here you are she says gesturing to the crowded living room where lou jane to have their grown sons and their families are spread over couches and flores plane tradeoff are piles of them announced that you survived it's a miracle she says rolling her eyes her beautiful face is glowing and they're so often the case with my or she is ecstatic she is also irish which makes the ecstasy seem even more lip from what then with wonder and intensity now my dear i must get more of those spinach like this before they're gone they are duty none of you should be here rings in my mind afterwards when i think of lou and jane both of whom were children in europe during the holocaust jane and her parents escaped from budapest barely enough to survive without threatening the narrow ai of concentration camps lose family in poland didn't an out of

dozens of his relatives only he and his brother survived and i'd like to jump to a few paragraphs at the end which takes place at another hanukkah party for those you don't know like cows are very tasty potato pancakes at the list of their surrogate i remember hanukkah a few years ago you are expanding beside me saying you know the candle lighting was very beautiful he more iraqis seemed to live to ever vanished and forty five other people were jammed and are living in kitchen and dining room for hanukkah party you mean the menorah lighting it's lovely when i see those candles let it makes me cry but not tears of sadness it just makes me happy i put my arm around him as llewyn to have his lady granddaughters way than had out toward their coats rick telling me to keep the cookies he brought because we're all

still here i ask yard yes he says i kiss him on the cheek as moira comes toward us her arms outstretched her face radiant it's so good to have the lads here together she says well i've not in agreement the miracle isn't just that they survived the miracle is that they found a way to live with courage laughter and joy while carrying those needles on the bone that's karen marion goldberg reading from her book needle in the boundary which was eighty two thousand fourteen kansas notable book karen thank you so much thank you so much man if you're just joining us it's our annual kansas notable so the first in a two part series highlighting some of the best books by or about cancer each year the state library's alexis fifteen kansas notable books ranging from children's books young adult fiction and nonfiction

on next week's program part two of the kansas audibles will hear a very special presentation by james mcbride he's the author of the good lord bird the fictitious story of a slave boy who's mistaken for a girl kidnapped and are freed by abolitionist john brown and the unlikely relationship that develops between them as brown takes his band of fighters from kansas to harpers ferry join us next week as james mcbride tells the story of the good lord bird words and music from a recent presentation sponsored by the juarez public library it's part two of our campus notable spots program on next week's kbr present and j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents and kansas public radio max mccoy teaches journalism and emporia state university and is the author of a number of books including four original indiana jones books for lucas films he's on the campus

notable two thousand fourteen list for his paranormal mystery of grave concern of grave concern is the first of several books with the protagonist ophelia wild of you is a bit of a departure in terms of my own so usual care usual characters but she is unusual in that she is a former con woman and trance medium who discovers that she really can talk to the dead and she sets up shop as a psychic detective in nineteen seventy seven dodge city i don't want to get into any of it and wanted to do any spoilers but there's a convergence of sorts between her life end that the bender family of southeast kansas tell me about the benders and how i am how they caught your interest well i grew up in southeast kansas i'd always heard stories of the benders and so has always counted on my radar and when i

wrote the story i wanted to feature the benders in some way in the bender's a really integral to the plot iodide can tell you exactly how because that would indeed be a spoiler but i can tell you that the reason that ophelia wild get stuck in dodge city is that she is mistaken for kate bender the spiritualist a notorious mass murderer and they hold her there the benders our fascinating of course and most kansans unheard of the vendors for people who haven't just give us a quick reminder well for making seventy one taking seventy three the bender family and they were really a family they were a collection of murders but they ran an ad roadhouse on the osage trail and what that can mean i just north of cherry veil and there were four individuals there was john senior and done and be an elder woman perhaps a couple there than there was a

young couple kate vendor and young john young john was ascribed a simple by many people like a banner was described as a beautiful beguiling as she did trance readings for neighbors should say ounces shia ever ties yourself the local newspapers is a magnetic healer so she had the sideline going in addition to the to the murderous an and what they would do is they would and seat travelers who were dining with them on this very lonely trail at their table in this and a small cabin that was divided into two rooms by a campus that hang down and they would see the travelers ritter backs against the canvas handed the travelers head it would be conveniently outlined her the cameras would convene by a linebacker travelers head and then they would

hit him in the head with a hammer throw their bodies down into the cellar and later bury them in an orchard they were known to have killed at least eleven people perhaps more and urban there are a range of crime came to an end when the brother of one of the victims came looking for him has said he'd never been heard from a handgun the younger brother searching on stage at the the bender and their air had dinner there weren't met with m n and thought there was something wrong and then later some of the policy and then when they got to be on the cabinet was deserted and it's an enduring kansas mystery what happened to the vendors we don't really know there are stories in southeast kansas that the neighboring farmers took care of the vendors and then bury them in unmarked graves not substantiated

but there were rewards offered for the vendors that ever kansas offered a pretty significant reward for the return there were sightings of the vendors for many years and wild just absolutely wild stories that was claimed the vendors were cited in a balloon fleeing kansas there were claims that the vendors had escape to canada one unfortunate moment as i recall was actually brought to court in candidate on charges that she was a vendor course he was later released but the story's persisted for quite some time so this is a bender mania really gripped the nation from for many years after these horrific crimes they really were in many ways like the regional manson family in terms of the the media attention that they demanded of great concern is a bit of a departure for you where did you get the idea for this book and and why this direction the idea came in two thousand nine years researching

the last of my historical westerns as a book called damnation road and it's seventy eighty nine he's in guthrie oklahoma and so i went down to two guthrie to do my research and was at the state library i'm reading newspaper clippings to try to get a feel of what life was like in in guthrie oklahoma territory at ninety eight and i came across a newspaper files that described a ghost in the eighty nines in and get three and i got fascinated by and of course i want to write a book featuring a ghost in the old west wow that i had to finish up this other book first and i'd already done get three for damnation were as i decided that well i'm a kansan i will move this to dodge city or work better actually does the city's going as such a great history but let me share with you the newspaper clipping that got me thinking about this it's dated april fifteenth at ninety six and is from the guthrie daily leader the headline is

red hand appeared house in which a supreme guide said to be haunted and of course that caught my attention short just right away the shack on the santa fe right of way in which the cypriot lula myers recently died is haunted how's that for a lead horrible grounds issue from the shack every night and passers by assert that weird and ghastly incantations take place within the building which was vacated shortly after the unfortunate girl's death last night a well known sport called it the house and tried the front door it failed to give way he tried the back door with the same result in returning to the front it suddenly flew open and a blood red hand holding a vile appeared in the room much excitement prevails among gamers residing in the vicinity of the haunted house and there's not just one story that this year there's several from get three and that this and it set us a hold story on its

own that the that the unfortunate cyprian was a morphine addict and and then she appears and she plead she says i'm sick please don't really have any more morphine and then the municipal judge gets in on the action he orders a vaccination so they can determine what to say to the body is physically or maybe the bodies been varied face down or something like this and don't know the bodies feinerman the shalit family comes in and claims the body and person is favors having a bit of fun with this is well i consider this growing newspaper folklore just like the newspaper stories from eating ideas about ufos and the flying saucers in a very famous case from from kansas down and we wrote about that but it got me to thinking about how constantly interest is in the spirit world have constant was them have cost and it is now it is really one of the essential questions that humanity still has not solve to anyone's satisfaction i think

and i an agnostic on the issue i don't know the there could be goes on but when i do you know it's a it's an awful lot of fun to write about them because he knew he'd you to read an excerpt from one of grave concern sure i saw the dead girl from the window of the train as we pass the hundreds meridian marker but i didn't say anything she was lying atop the bronze tablet turn on her right side returnees drawn up as if to sleep i knew she was dead because your throat had been cut her hair was straight and blonde and ruffled by the breeze and the ends were stained cleric really had trailed in blood her flower print calico dress is torn open to the waist or course it was popped open and judging from her bare shoulders i surmised she was young their address was bunched around her staff meets her hose and fallen and she wore only one way shoo her left her right arm was

al stretched with the hand tightly clenched blue fingers squeezed tightly over something few things now surprising but i covered my mouth and uttered a bit of a gasp instinctively my left hand one at eddie's cage on the seat beside me seeking a familiar comfort and the train slowed by rove warehouses cutting off my view of anything then painted lumber dodge city the conductor called walking and steadily through the coach one hand on each chair back as if pulling himself along ten minute stop for colon water dodge city i avoided his days there are more than two dozen passengers in the coach all strangers and they had been decidedly cool to me many were immigrants rough men in ragged families mostly german and welsh down for the mining district in the san juan country in colorado but others were businessman somewhat their wives and the women and find clothes they avoided my eyes were whispered one another about me and stared and i thought i wasn't looking

it would prove awkward to chat up any of the cold fish around me and casually ask if they too had seen the butchered girl in the calico dress and i'd not exactly been on speaking terms with the spirits in years so i couldn't ask them for help in fact i was beginning to doubt there's anything beyond the grave at all except forever and eternally more grave imagine all the time we spend on our nice feeling guilty packed an uncomfortable peers feeling righteous reading dusty passages in old books feeling nothing and singing dreadful hands of one sort or another that would be the ultimate joke and all of this now wouldn't and don't tell me the jokes now i knew you're too smart to believe in any of that anyway we all say silent prayers when were sick or were scared if you haven't said desperate prayers for yourself then you send them for someone you love at one time or another we all do it i know i have maybe

yours were answered that's max mccoy reading from of grave concern and ophelia while paranormal mystery ophelia wild makes another appearance in the spirit is willing now in paperback a third in the ophelia wild series giving up the ghost is scheduled for release in november you can find out more at max mccoy dot com i'm j mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio our next book is not just a kansas notable winner it also won the national book award for young people's literature the thing about luck is the story of a girl named summer who comes to kansas as part of a migrant team brought in to harvest wheat cynthia cut a hot of lives in los angeles i met up with her while on vacation our interview took place at the wilshire branch of the los angeles public library my first question to her

as a japanese american living in los angeles why kansas it was getting an award actually for another book and i was in kansas at a luncheon for this award and somebody mentioned to me that there was a family band they were custom harvesters and i had never heard of this before and explain that farmers often don't harvest their own crops they hire custom harvesters stick up crops for them and i just thought that sounds like a great idea to write about being so about a month later i was back in kansas staying with the family was from the luncheon of fame harvesting family and they help me through the novel that every step in just explained everything that iranians now about harvesting summer isn't from kansas she ends up with her grandparents it through kind of been an unlikely turn events in her life and her brothers yes her parents a book called back to japan to say care of elderly relatives and as a result she has

her parents are the ones who are going to be i'm working as harvesters but instead she and her grandparents have to go work of harvesters so she has to deal with her grandparents about the interference of her parents are now so it's kind of a new experience for her there's a lot going on in terms of clashes in this story a clash of cultures intergenerational classes taught me a little bit about how that just is red territory for you as a novelist well i love clashes clashes between older people and younger people are between two older people i just love writing about how the characters because they're so themselves it's like maybe when they were younger they can kind of calm calm down their real selves little bit as they went through the work world but once they get older they can just let themselves go and be who they are so i just love

writing about older characters and it was really fun for me to write about them the grandfather and grandmother in their palatial ship the kids this is also very much a coming of age story for summer yes summer learned so little bubbly stirring and during the summer and she also learns a little bit about her personal story but the title of your book the thing about like this is a story with some fairly bad luck going on yes there's a lot going on but there's also been a lot going on in it and part of the good luck is just set the fact that they are family who are clearly in love with each other even though there's all this strife going on between an unmanned so i think it's it's a story without a bad life but with inner good luck if that makes sense you've written a number of novels for young adult novel is for adults including then the very award

winning cara cara what do your books have in common are there common threads for you the traits or all of them properly for that for the ones that are japanese oriented japanese american and i would say really hard work it is and my dad worked very long hours in a very repetitive jobs and that really stuck with me and now swollen face a kind of attracted me to working as the harvester because you work very long hours so it seemed like a very natural subject for me to write about the deal have a passage from her book that you can read for us i do i have one my favorite passages that i like to read this idiot son is the grandfather of the main character the main character's name summer and her brother is is the name jazz and they're in bed the highlight went on anti time came into the bedroom

he pulled up a chair from i guess tonight i tell you the story of a read he said one day when i boy i pulling weeds in orange grove very hot many we'd back hurts bad day we came from all over the night before suddenly more wheat than i ever see week my special enemy i hate more than anything i have many nightmare about weed that day i find special week i never see before or my mother scold me but it we'd roots carefully out in the field and put my special week in jar of water then after work i planted in wet soil every day i take care of that we it go as tall as me and that year we have best tasting orange crop ever we raise price because everyone wants our oranges so i want you to remember always keep my open for special read you quote special read or your

sunni legacy mean this idea time he said that he had cut a hot air reading from her young adult book about one other thing about luck was named a book in two thousand he also won the two thousand thirteen national book award for young people's literature a special thing for the major branch of the los angeles public library for hosting our interview i'm kate mcintyre our final kansas notable book for today is from the prairie collection of short memoirs of the great plains writers group does anyone who writes a memoir is trying to stop time to recover something that's been lost to the furious passing of years to set down in words what once took place so that it can be given permanent forum it all comes down to the same thing we write about the past to defy the passage of time and through our writings we both discover and

define who we are hoping that others will acknowledge us in all our complexity and idiosyncrasies if those others are our children and grandchildren are narrative can serve as a starting point for the story that they might like to tell some day just as we shape and identity partly by combing through the past they will see a part of themselves emerging out of the written record that we leave behind that's jenn i growl of the great plains writers group she's reading from their collection of essays echoes from the prairie edited by nick called much more in interest of full disclosure jenny is a colleague and friend of mine she works for k pr its sister station audio reader which provides breeding services for the blind and visually impaired gen thanks for coming by today thanks for having me gay echoes from the prairie it's a collection of about fifty short memoirs written by twenty three members of the great plains writers group gen just what is the great plains writers group and the great french writers group is a group of

local authors they came together back in march i'm not even sure exactly what you're wise that was parrot as eight class types down at the lawrence arts center a memoir writing class during mass and to lead that group and after the class was over they all decided hey we'd like to try to keep going so they agreed to keep meeting started working out of signs of life bookstore and that's the point where i got involved shortly after their first book came out i had contacted nicole much more who edited that volume as well as the swan and invited her to come read it for our year reader and at that point she settled jen you're a writer you should come to our group as well so i started going and bringing some of my own memoir writing and found that it was just a fine group of people to get together and share ideas and share our stories and critique each other's writing in a very safe environment and i think that's why the group it was so much fun to be a part of this is just because everyone was so supportive of each other

and was able to share ideas that ultimately made our writing better because film a prairie is dozens of essays from a variety of authors what as his have in common with each other well the interesting thing about this book is the us is kind of cover for different areas the first part of it looks at why write memoir and first place those first three essays really kind of explore that idea why do we as humans feel the need to tell our story then it moves into the different phases of life childhood in the transition to adulthood adulthood and then finally the passage of time and all of those are themes that we can all identify where i am oftentimes in the group as we read each other stories in and listened to each other we would find that we all have a sense of oh that makes me think of the time that this happened to me and that's the thing about memoir writing is it's something that everyone can identify with we all have a story and our stories all overlapping and of

twine know you have three essays in at the sun prairie take it should i read from one of those sure this essay was written about my son ben from when he was very very young i think he was oh about eighteen months when this started so and he's actually autographed copy of the book because the book is around a writing group when we first got them and he came with me because he was being naughty at home and so his punishment was to come to memoir group with me and he ended up having the best time because everyone else started inviting him to sign his story of a celebrity it is though there was no punishment it at all it ended up being he had a great time so he's my little budding arthur i think so then spits shoes off boots on exclaimed our youngest son ben h two upon meeting his first pair of cowboy boots we had been dining at the t rex restaurant at the legends shopping center in kansas city kansas the restaurant was a favorite of big

brother charlie speech five charlie was all about dinosaurs he could rattle off the names and statistics with no effort as we headed back to the current we passed calendars western store and spotted some john deere toys in the window then it was infatuated with anything on four wheels especially john deere in fact every time we passed a tractor sales lot on our way to kansas city he would scream with delight track terror trapped her we couldn't resist stopping in to take a look we opened the glass door and entered a western wonderland the front counter was built to resemble a horse star complete with saddles tack and other equipment nailed to its border we just wrapped up on rack of western wear women's to the left means to the right as we made our way to the back of the store and a small toy section the boys test ahead is dave and i sauntered behind hand in hand smiles spreading over our faces it has always been a fan of cowboy boots so while the boys boots and od over the toy tractors he and i headed for the footwear

they wore boots almost exclusively the entire time we dated i on the other hand was not a big fan of the child i did play dress up with graham a doris his shoes i'd probably boots included when i grew into them in fourth grade she gave them to me i truly wanted to love them just because they were herders but they're pinched my toes and gave new blisters i outgrew them quickly and never desired another pair so while the vitamins bits eyebrows to the little boys boots in all colors blue red green brown black then i saw something glorious in the back corner of the boot section they stood out like a greenbaum john deere cowboy boots complete with bright green and yellow peppers i called out leave come here you have to cds he appeared at my side and quickly agreed with my assessment then whittle love these he said being the family budget or i quickly checked the price tag

appointing getting a two year old's hopes up if we couldn't afford them it's a twenty five dollars more than i would normally spend on kids' shoes if we buy them big maybe he could wear them for a couple of years i said to dave justifying the purchase he agreed he then come here they've called out we watched dispense blonde head hair styled into a bowl cut bob's toward us charlie followed along starting to complain we go now to going to be he whined not long i told charlie as they presented the boots to then his blue eyes wide and immediately as he said in his best back off cause i'm calling the shots now voice shoes off boots on his polar padded bottom hit the sales floor and his shoes were off in a flash we quickly fitted them with the john deere but it's feeling very much like cinderella split men smiling as he leapt to his feet and strutted about the store it mire in his newly shuffled feet that's jenn like her reading her as they were

balance bids from echoes from the prairie john thank you so much thank you gay echoes from the prairie the thing about lot of great concern needle in the bone and bleeding kansas bleeding missouri just a few of the best books by kansas or about kansas do join us next week for part two of the kansas notable books some of the books on tap for next sunday andy marso knows worth the pain how meningitis nearly killed me then changed my life for the better nj marshals teatime to tailgate one hundred fifty years at the case to a table for the remainder of this hour it's a special rebroadcast from just last week i interviewed are new poet laureate eric mchenry about his vision for his term in office and he shared a few poems with us one of those poems was one he'd written about gil carter but tim peake a man who back in nineteen fifty nine hit

what may have been the longest home run ever in professional baseball recorded at seven hundred thirty three feet bill carter passed away that same evening at eighty three years old i'd like to remember mr carter with eric make henry's poem that gil carter correspondence before he takes his insulin the man who hit the really long homerun response in longhand to another patient fan thank you so much for riding mr barnes yes i remember almost everything the nighthawk silhouettes the infield chatter the ball becoming huge the hitch was swinging the lone voice swallowing its last know better slack faces lifted to the firmament and by the ball i hope you know i mean the one that hadn't finished its ascent the last time it was seen which isn't necessarily the one beside me as i write

it wasn't hard and fifty nine to find a fresh homerun in any big new mexican backyard home run what a spectacular misnomer you can go home again you get a dog if forced to choose and they might favor home or less for odysseus than for his dog what do i truly say about this ball is horse hired twine and yarn from coast to recur hugging a hunk of cork from portugal on its slow odyssey to ease topeka my home or would have been the shortest leg i saw the scenes that night the suture mother and realized that this was the only egg horses and men would ever put together and that i should reopen it should try to beat it back into the cosmic batter from which we are

conjured chickens long to fly but if an egg come along it longs to shatter of course i couldn't do it once again i took the full cut and it's simply a flu i'd love to tell you how that felt but then i wouldn't be the only one who knew that's a guild card or correspondence by kansas poet laureate derek luke henry gill carter passed away last sunday at the age of eighty three nine kate mcintyre kbr presents is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas