BOOK NOTES
Events at Full Circle Bookstore include author reading and a signing
September author events at Full Circle Bookstore include a reading from the author of a noted children’s book on the Tulsa Race Massacre and a signing from the editors of a new book on female activism in Oklahoma. Signings are open to the public and copies of the books being signed at each event will be available for purchase while supplies last. Masks and social distancing are strongly recommended.
The bookstore has announced the following events:
• 10:30 a.m. Sept. 18: Local author Najah-Amatullah Hylton reads from her children’s book “Opal’s Greenwood Oasis.” About the book: In both words and illustrations, this carefully researched and historically accurate book allows children to experience the joys and success of 1921 Greenwood, a Black community in Tulsa that was one of the most prosperous of the early 20th Century. Soon after Opal’s narrative, Greenwood would be destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre.
• 6:30 p.m. Sept. 23: Editors Sarah Eppler Janda and Patricia Loughlin will sign copies of “This Land is Herland.” The collection connects Oklahoma women’s individual and collective endeavors to larger themes of intersectionality, suffrage, politics, motherhood, and civil rights in the American West and the United States.
Stillwater Friends of the Library used book sale postponed
The Friends of the Stillwater Public Library Board has voted to postpone its Sept. 16-19 used book sale citing concerns for the safety of its customers, volunteers, and members and a desire to help the community’s health professionals by not hosting a large event that attracts over a thousand shoppers from across the state. The Friends Board will reschedule the sale for the spring and is planning a series of mini-sales in the fall and winter.
For more information, visit library.stillwater.org or follow @StillwaterOKLib on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Contact the library Help Desk with questions or concerns at askalibrarian@stillwater.org or by phone at 405-372-3633 x8106.
Oklahoma native shares surprising city stories
“Secret Oklahoma City: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure,” by Jeff Provine (Reedy Press, 208 pages, on sale Sept. 15)
Oklahoma “farm kid-turned-professor” Jeff Provine has spent more than a decade researching Oklahoma City tales. This guide to the obscure helps you unlock the city and surrounding area’s most intriguing, entertaining, and arcane surprises. Oklahoma City was called “A City Born Grown” after it went from a population of a handful at Oklahoma Depot to over 10,000 on its first day.
Here are upcoming events for the book. All are free and open to the public:
• 7 to 8 p.m. Sept. 30: Presentation and signing, Overholser Mansion, 405 NW 15th Street.
• 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 1: Signing, Paseo Plunge, 3010 Paseo.
• 3 to 5 p.m. Oct. 9: Signing, Core4 Brewing, 7 N Lee Avenue.
• 2 to 3 p.m. Oct. 17: Signing, Full Circle Books, 1900 Northwest Expressway
• 7 to 8 p.m. Oct. 26: Presentation, Del City Library, 4330 SE 15th Street.
New books feature Oklahoma during war
“The Broomcorn Field: The Odyssey of an Army Ranger in World War II (The Broomcorn Field Series)” by MM Gibson (Independently published, 454 pages, in stores)
“Leaving Pontotoc County: The Odyssey of Two Young Women in World War II (The Broomcorn Field Series)” by MM Gibson (Independently published, 454 pages, in stores)
University of Oklahoma alumnus MM Gibson has recently completed two novels, both of which are set in Oklahoma during World War II.
The first, “The Broomcorn Field,” features a high school student from the Oklahoma Panhandle who is selected to become an Army Ranger and who fights Nazis, is injured, rescued, and sent to recuperate at the Naval Hospital in Norman.
The second, “Leaving Pontotoc County,” concerns two young wives who attend OU during the War. After their husbands go overseas, one joins the Army and serves on a hospital ship. The other heroine is stunned to learn that her live-in maid growing up was a victim of the Ku Klux Klan Massacre of 1921.