Book Club

Sunday, June 18, 2019
2:00 pm
The BookBar
4280 Tennyson St, Denver, CO 80212

Our book selection for June is Kickdown: A Novel by Rebecca Clarren ’97. We’ve also selected the date and book for our August 18th meeting, which will be The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine F. Weiss

About Kickdown by Rebecca Clarren ’97

When Jackie Dunbar’s father dies, she takes a leave from medical school and goes back to the family cattle ranch in Colorado to set affairs in order. But what she finds derails her: the Dunbar ranch is bankrupt, her sister is having a nervous breakdown, and the oil and gas industry has changed the landscape of this small western town both literally and figuratively, tempting her to sell a gas lease to save the family land. There is fencing to be repaired and calves to be born, and no one—except Jackie herself—to take control. But then a gas well explodes in the neighboring ranch, and the fallout sets off a chain of events that will strain trust, sever old relationships, and ignite new ones. Rebecca Clarren’s Kickdown is a tautly written debut novel about two sisters and the Iraq war veteran who steps in to help. It is a timeless and timely meditation on the grief wrought by death, war, and environmental destruction. Kickdown, like Kent Haruf’s Plainsong or Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone, weaves together the threads of land, family, failure, and perseverance to create a gritty tale about rural America.

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Let us know if you’re interested in joining the Smith Club Book Club. 

The Smith Club Book Club meets on the fourth Sunday of the month (with some exceptions) at 2:00 pm on a bi-monthly schedule. Meetings are held at the BookBar in North Denver’s Tennyson District. The Book Club focuses on books (fiction and non-fiction) written by or about Smith women.

2019 Smith Club Book Club Dates and Selections

• February 24 – The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
• April 28 – Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen Carter
• June 18 – Kickdown: A Novel by Rebecca Clarren ’97
• August 18 – The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote by Elaine F. Weiss
• October 27 – TBD 
• December 22 – TBD 

2018 Smith Club Book Club Selections

• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• The Velveteen Daughter by Laurel Davis Huber ’73
• Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction by Mary Ellen Hannibal ’81
• We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
• My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

2017 Smith Club Book Club Selections

• A Spoonful of Sugar by Amanda Orr ’90
• Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love by Simran Sethi ’92
• My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem ’56
• Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper ’96
• Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman (Bryn Mawr College ’64, MA ’67).
• The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez