DSM Book Club
We think the best part of finishing a good book is talking about it with friends. That’s why we’ve started the DSM Book Club.
The DSM Book Club is a new online sharing session designed to showcase our favorite reads and get you ready to meet the authors at our March Festival. This Club will inspire you with a monthly pick and features an online Zoom book discussion. Each month will feature one book that is connected to The Festival and an individual registration for participation. We hope you will join us every month, but there’s no guilt if you miss one.
Participation in the DSM Book Club is FREE thanks to our sponsors.
July 2020: "An American Marriage" by Tayari Jones
Presentation facilitator to be announced soon!
Club Meeting: July 30 at 7 p.m. | Register Here
About the Book
Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together when they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to 12 years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. “An American Marriage” is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward — with hope and pain — into the future.
About the Author
New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author four novels, most recently “An American Marriage.” Published in 2018, An American Marriage is an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his end of the year roundup. The novel was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), Aspen Words Prize and an NAACP Image Award. With more than 500,000 copies in print domestically, it has been published in two dozen countries.
Jones, a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016.
Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa and Arizona State University. She is an A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.
Jones is scheduled to present at the 2021 Festival as part of the Des Moines Public Library’s Authors Visiting in Des Moines (AViD) series.