Writing about Iowa

Speaker: 
A Conversation with Jane Smiley
 
06 Oct 2014
 
7:00 PM
 
Sun Room, Memorial Union

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Jane Smiley is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres. Her new novel, Some Luck, follows an American farm family during three transformative decades.The book is the first in a trilogy covering 100 years in this family's history. Smiley is the author of numerous novels, as well as five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She was a professor of English at Iowa State from 1981 to 1996 and has a masters, MFA and doctorate from the University of Iowa. Steve Sullivan, local film reviewer and member of the Ames Public Library Friends Foundation, will moderate the discussion.

A book signing will follow the event.

[b]Some Luck: A Novel[/b] On their farm in Denby, Iowa, Rosanna and Walter Langdon abide by time-honored values that they pass on to their five wildly different yet equally remarkable children: Frank, the brilliant, stubborn first-born; Joe, whose love of animals makes him the natural heir to his family's land; Lillian, an angelic child who enters a fairy-tale marriage with a man only she will fully know; Henry, the bookworm who's not afraid to be different; and Claire, who earns the highest place in her father's heart. Moving from post-World War I America through the early 1950s, Some Luck gives us an intimate look at this family's triumphs and tragedies, zooming in on the realities of farm life, while casting - as the children grow up and scatter to New York, California, and everywhere in between - a panoramic eye on the monumental changes that marked the first half of the twentieth century. Rich with humor and wisdom, twists and surprises, Some Luck takes us through deeply emotional cycles of births and deaths, passions, and betrayals, displaying Smiley's dazzling virtuosity, compassion, and understanding of human nature and the nature of history, never discounting the role of fate and chance. This potent conjuring of many lives across generations is a stunning tour de force.