August 14, 2018
The SAM Book Club meets on a monthly basis and is facilitated by Registrar & Programming Coordinator, Loissa Harrison-Parks. As meetings (5 pm-6:15 pm) are free to attend, we invite everyone to come and enjoy art-related conversation and complimentary wine and cheese in SAM’s Charles Platt Italianate Gardens, or Garden-View Room depending on season. The book of the month for August is Girl Reading by Marianne Wiggins.
Overview:
“The Shadow Catcher dramatically inhabits the space where past and present intersect, seamlessly interweaving narratives from two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century icon Edward Curtis (1868-1952) and his muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century journey of redemption.
Narrated in the first person by a reimagined writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel begins in Hollywood, where top producers are eager to sentimentalize the complicated life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: “It’s got the outdoors. It’s got adventure. It’s got the do-good element.” Yet, contrary to Curtis’s esteemed public reputation as servant to his nation, the artist was an absent husband and disappearing father. Jump to the next generation, when Marianne’s own father, John Wiggins (1920-1970), would live and die in equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust.”