Hi everyone, just a quick reminder; the June Book Club for Adults gathering is this Friday, June 12, 2026, start time 3:00 p.m.

We’ll be discussing the book “My Name Is Emilia del Valle” by Isabel Allende. The novel is set in the mid-nineteenth century and tells the story of the character of the title, Emilia del Valle. Emilia is born in San Francisco in 1866 the out-of-wedlock daughter of an Irish nun and a Chilean aristocrat. She is raised by her supportive stepfather and grows into a strong willed, independent woman with a passion for writing. As an adult, she finds love and encounters her father while perusing her calling to write. The novel unfolds during the Chilean Civil War. Copies of the back are still available at the Circulation Desk.

Zoom link available upon request; you can request the link by sending an email to: reimerl@stls.org  

Looking forward, our July read is “The Antidote” by Karen Russell. The Antidote is a critically acclaimed novel, which has a bit of everything. It unfolds in the small town of Uz, Nebraska during the Great Depression, during a dust storm, and follows an ensemble cast of characters including prairie witch Antonina Rossi who is something of a counselor for local residents, Harp Oletsky a  man who stood with his parents as Pawnee people were driven from their land – the land his family was settling, Dell Oletsky a 15-year-old basketball prodigy whose mother Lada was just murdered, hobo Clemson Louis Dew who has falsely been convicted of Lada’s murder and Cleo Allfrey, a black New Deal photographer, who doesn’t believe Clemson Dew is guilty.

And looking backwards to our May; in May we read and discussed “Travels With George” by Nathaniel Philbrick. The book was inspired by John Steinbeck’s famous 1962 travelogue “Travels With Charley” which chronicled Steinbeck’s cross-country trip from Maine to California with his wife’s dog Charley. Steinbeck, who was in shaky health, wanted to see America, and what Americans were like; one last time before he passed. Taking a page out of Steinbeck’s book, Nathaiel Philbrick’s goal was to travel the roads George Washington traveled in 1780, to meet and greet Americans and see what their thought and concerns were about the state of the word; after he was elected President and before he settled down to govern. Two hundred and twenty-nine years after Washington made that trip,  Philbrick, accompanied by his wife Melissa and their dog Dora, followed in his footsteps, traveling the same roads and reflecting on the history of the United States, with a strong emphasis on George Washington and the formative years of the country, and pondering the ways that, that history is important today and reflects who we are as a nation.

Have a great day!

Linda Reimer

Southeast Steuben County Library