Author Archives: Lisa Kelly

Omaha native Jonis Agee grew up in Nebraska and Missouri so they are often the settings for her novels. The New York Times Book Review called her “a gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape.”  She is a Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and teaches creative writing and twentieth-century fiction. She earned her BA at the University of Iowa and her MA and PhD from the State University of New York at Binghamton.

Jonis has been awarded two Nebraska Book Awards for The Weight of Dreams and Acts of Love on Indigo Road and three of her books — Strange Angels, Bend This Heart, and Sweet Eyes — were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. She is the co-writer, with her husband Brent Spencer, of the screenplays Full Throttle, Baghdad Rules and Everlasting.  Together they live on a small acreage north of Omaha in Ponca Hills. Of her five novels four are included in our book club collection:  The River Wife, Strange Angels, Sweet Eyes, and Weight of Dreams. In each she creates a strong sense of Midwestern place alongside compelling family dramas laced with grit. Please consider selecting one of Agee’s titles for your next book club selection.

I became aware of Stephanie Kallos, an author with a Nebraska connection, when I served on the committee to help select One Book One Lincoln in 2006. Her first novel, Broken for You had been nominated and I was struck by the artful way Kallos spun multiple themes of brokenness, both overwhelming and subtle, together into one plot. The selection committee ranked it in the top 5 five of all the nominations and I successfully recommended it to a few of my friends after I finished.

Stephanie grew up in Lincoln and now resides in Seattle with her husband, two sons, a Labrador and two tabby cats and is currently working on her third novel.  Broken for You was published in 2004 and was chosen by Sue Monk Kidd as a "Today Show" book club selection and received the Washington State and PNBA Book Awards. Her second novel, Sing Them Home, was published in 2009 and was selected as a January ’09 IndieNext title.

We own both of Kallos' titles in our book club collection so consider selecting this Nebraska author for your next book club read.

Kent Haruf (rhymes with sheriff) graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965 where he later taught as an assistant professor. He earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973. These are only a few of his credentials but he came to my attention when his book Plainsong was announced as the very first One Book One Lincoln in 2002. That book marked the beginning of my own book group and a relationship with the One Book One Lincoln program that remains to this day.

Plainsong takes place in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado and is based on the town of Yuma where Mr. Haruf lived in the ‘80s. In a Newsweek review, Jeff Giles called the book “a moving look at our capacity for both pointless cruelty and simple decency, our ability to walk out of the wreckage of one family and build a stronger one where it used to stand.” Many local readers were miffed at the lack of quotation marks throughout the book and this caused a bit of kerfuffle. As I listened to the audio version, it wasn’t an issue.  Another Haruf title follows some of the same characters in Holt and is entitled Eventide.

Kent Haruf died at the age of 71 in November of 2014. To honor this writer, you may wish to select some of his titles in our collection: Eventide, Plainsong, The Tie That Binds and Where You Once Belonged

Ted Kooser served as the United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004–2006 and spoke in many venues around the state and the country during his tenure. I heard him speak at the Lied Center in Lincoln, NE and I recall him sharing that he had been compared to a hobbit. In fact, one of his speeches at Wartburg College in 2012 was entitled: American Hobbit or a Great Storyteller. In 2003, I helped select his title Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps, for the Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction and as a One Book One Lincoln finalist in 2005. It was also selected as One Book One Nebraska for 2011. I have given copies of this book to many friends and family members. Here is my favorite quote from that book:

If you can awaken inside the familiar and discover it new you need never leave home. Local wonders.

I remember Ted sharing how he hoped to make poetry more ubiquitous and approachable to readers. If you reread the line above it may not register as poetry or at least, not the kind you dealt with in your high school or college literature classes. If your book group would like to branch out and read something besides a fiction or non-fiction selection, try Local Wonders. Have your readers pick their favorite parts and read them aloud at your discussion. You may do the very thing Kooser hoped he could accomplish and make a poetry lover out of you.

Alex Kava writes full-time and lives in Omaha, Nebraska and Pensacola, Florida. She is a bestselling author known for her psychological suspense series featuring FBI profiler Maggie O’Dell. Fans of Maggie O’Dell will be interested in Kava’s new spinoff series featuring Ryder Creed, a retired marine dog handler. Creed’s investigative and rescue work with his dogs leads him to team up with O’Dell in both Breaking Creed, the first book in the Ryder Creed series, published in January 2015, and Silent Creed, the second book, scheduled for publication in July 2015.

Kava’s book One False Move was selected as the One Book One Nebraska for 2006. My book group read this title, much to the delight of one member who is an avid mystery reader, and had a good discussion about genre books as well as the book itself. As often happens when readers have first-hand knowledge of the location where a book’s actions take place, the familiar Nebraska setting also stimulated discussion.

We have several of Kava’s books in our book club collection including: At The Stroke of Madness, Black Friday, Fireproof, Hotwire, A Necessary Evil, One False Move, A Perfect Evil, The Soul Catcher, and Split Second. If you are concerned about reading the books in order – here is the series listing. Perhaps for the summer you may want to select several from her Maggie O’Dell series? Visit our book club kit page to make your selections!

I’m not sure many of us could remember who gave our high school commencement address, but I do remember that Roger Welsch spoke at my Senior Honor Banquet. What’s more, I still remember one of the jokes he told; still use it too. I also have fond memories of living in Texas and relishing Roger’s Postcards from Nebraska on CBS Sunday Morning News. And, after working my way straight through college and graduate school with no break and no time for reading anything other than what was assigned,  I remember the first book I really enjoyed reading after graduation; It’s Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See it From Here, by Roger Welsch.

We often hear that book clubs are looking for a break from serious titles. If you’re familiar with Welsch’s style, you know that his works might be just the ticket! You can find the following Welsch titles in our book club collection: Catfish at the Pump: Humor and the Frontier, Everything I Know About Women I Learned From My Tractor, From Tinkering to Torquing: A Beginner’s Guide to Tractors and Tools, It’s Not the End of the Earth, But You Can See it From Here: Tales of the Great Plains, A Life With Dogs, and Shingling the Fog and Other Plains Lies. Please consider selecting one of these books for your book club and let us know when we can reserve them for you.

If your book group would like to select a nonfiction title to read, let me suggest getting to know Mary Pipher. Mary lives in Lincoln with her husband Jim and has written 9 books – four of which we have in our Book Club collection. My book group read The Middle of Everywhere a few years ago and as the setting for the text is Lincoln, many people recognized several locations and people mentioned. That is always an intriguing element of a book with a local author. The book is also informative as Mary presents Lincoln as a refugee relocation center and illustrates how new citizens of Lincoln need assistance. She coins the expression cultural broker and explains the sorts of ways she provides help to refugees earnestly trying to make the United States their home. My group had an excellent discussion with this title and I think yours could too.

A colleague and I both read Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World at the same time and had great discussions. With this book we learned about Mary’s background and her personal life especially in terms of negotiating balance between her family and promoting her books. Mary read from this book at the Nebraska Book Festival sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book and it was a pleasure hearing her voice present her own text.