OUR ANNUAL MEETING IS COMING UP JUNE 9TH: PLEASE JOIN US TO DISCUSS HER BOOK NEW HOPE. The Ruth Suckow MemorialAssociation, http://www.ruthsuckow.org/, will be focusing on the book New Hope for our annual meeting this year on Saturday, June 9th, 2012. We will meet at the Cedar Falls Public Library in Cedar Falls, Iowa. We welcome you to join us as we discuss this book. This year marks 120 years since Ruth Suckow's birth. Her legacy goes beyond the genre of regional writing and even the label of realism does not adequately describe her ability to describe the everyday lives of people living in the small towns of Iowa in the early to mid 1900s. While some of the expressions in the dialogue might be a little dated,her books and short stories focus on many themes still relevant today. As a Community College teacher, I use one of her short stories in my Introduction to Literature class and find students are able to identify with the characters and themes. I've just started reading New Hope and look forward to posting a complete review later on.

Join us for our 2011 Annual Meeting on Saturday, June 11th

Ruth Suckow’s The Folks

The public is invited to a discussion of Cedar Falls writer Ruth Suckow’s most famous novel, The Folks, Saturday, June 11 at 1 p.m. at the Hearst Center for the Arts.

Barbara Lounsberry, University of Northern Iowa emeritus professor of English, will lead the discussion of this 1934 Iowa novel set in Belmond (which means “beautiful world” in French). The novel follows Fred and Annie Ferguson, “the folks” of the title, and their children, from their start on an Iowa farm and as they branch out in the early twentieth century.

“The Folks has been called Suckow’s masterpiece,” Lounsberry explains. “Suckow captures with searing realism the joys and sorrows each generation meets, the challenges of leaving and returning, and the abiding Iowa earth.”

Copies of the novel are available in the “Iowa Section” of the Cedar Falls Public Library.

For further information, contact Lounsberry (Lounsberry@gmail.com).