Everybody Reads 2022 books are in! “The Beadworkers” by Beth Piatote. Click here to request a copy today in preparation for the author’s visit to our library in the fall.

“This luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and life of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world. Told with humor, subtlety, and sparseness, the mixed-genre works of Piatote’s first collection draw on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life. A woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship. An eleven-year-old girl narrates the unfolding of the Fish Wars in the 1960s as her family is propelled to its front lines. In 1890, as tensions escalate at Wounded Knee, two young men at college–one French and the other Lakota–each contemplate a death in the family. In the final, haunting piece, a Nez Perce-Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a moving revision of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Formally inventive and filled with vibrant characters, The Beadworkers offers a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life.” — description provided by publisher.

Everybody Reads – Building a shared reading experience to foster curiosity, spark discussion and celebrate a love of story and community engagement. Learn more at everybody-reads.org.