One week from today I will wake up in the great state of South Dakota. Custer City to be exact.
My morning will start early as I roll out of bed at 5am and into the hills of Custer State Park for the Buffalo Roundup. I can feel my storyteller’s adrenaline already ramping up in anticipation of witnessing 1100 Buffalo being herded from the plains into pens where they will be recorded, inspected and cared for, before releasing them back into the wild.
However, by night’s end I will have switched directions dramatically as I meet with the woman whose invitation began my South Dakota journey. Her name is Vonnie Shields. She is the current Chair of the South Dakota Humanities Council (SDHC). She is also a book lover of the most passionate kind.
Vonnie’s book fervor has not only shaped her life, it has inspired her to a legacy of community service in coordinating authors and scholars for SDHC events and discussions, as well as promoting the council’s “One Book SD” program, where state residents are encouraged to read a selected novel or memoir throughout the year. Her book love affair is renown throughout South Dakota and in 2013 earned her The South Dakota Humanities Council Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities Award.
In her personal life, this busy lady belongs to three book clubs and that is where Vonnie and I intersected.
Back in February of this year I was on a Beauty & Grace tour of Florida. At one of my presentations/signings a woman purchased two copies of my book---one for her and one for her friend in South Dakota. At the time, I found that sort of amusing. Who in South Dakota would want to read my book?
As I soon found out, Vonnie Shields was that South Dakota reader and not only did she like Beauty & Grace, she wanted to suggest it to her book club as their September read.
Now book clubs are my meat and potatoes when it comes to traveling across the United States and introducing people to my work. To think that readers in South Dakota—a land far removed from my Buffalo, NY hometown---would be choosing to read my unknown author’s work was exciting and inspiring.
Then Vonnie further explained her book club.
It’s a group she founded ten years ago based on her desire to share books with women she believed to be in need of support and inspiration. She set the membership at 12 and extended an invitation to join. And that’s how the South Dakota Women’s Prison Book Club began.
When Vonnie emailed to ask me to ship 12 books for the club, I was honored and immeasurably inspired. Writing is many things to me, but one of the most essential is the opportunity to share stories that can make a difference. In choosing Beauty & Grace, Vonnie explained that my book’s storyline of women who were institutionalized, often for reasons beyond their control, who struggled and yet survived offered a redemptive element that she felt would reach and impact the women prisoners.
It only took me a couple of emails with Vonnie before I was volunteering—pretty much begging—-to join the book club’s discussion of Beauty & Grace, in person. I had no idea how I was going to manage the trip, but I knew sharing the Beauty & Grace journey with the members of this book club would be life-changing—something I did not want to regret missing.
The steps from begging to presenting have taken time and a lot of communication. Even though I’m a beloved mom and Nana and a good Irish Catholic girl, to boot, the South Dakota Prison System still required that I pass their sniff test. Three pages of information and affadavits later, I submitted their paperwork and then began worrying about any unpaid traffic tickets in my past!
Thankfully, I passed the investigation with flying colors and next Friday evening will be given a pink padge that will allow me entry behind the prison walls.
I’m not going to deny a certain concern over how I will react when those prison doors definitively close behind me. At the same time, the prospect of sitting with the 12 women of this book club and sharing my work that, for months, I wrote by “living” within the walls of an asylum, is deeply compelling. No doubt, I will learn more from them than any writer’s wisdom I can share.
It’s going to be quite a day, next Friday, the first full day of my South Dakota journey. And I am deeply grateful for Vonnie Shields and and her book lovers passion for making it happen.