CANCELLED Literary Masters

Join us in this study group as we read and discuss seven novels that cover some of the most important periods in American history. We will begin with March by Geraldine Brooks (Harper Perennial, 2005), a father’s retelling of Little Women and our longest novel, set during the Civil War. Then, we will jump back to our country’s beginnings with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Norton, 2017), one of America’s first bestsellers. We will move on to an exploration of race and identity in the 1920s with Passing by Nella Larsen (Signet, 2021); a classic work of detective fiction of the 1930s with The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (Vintage Crime, 1989); and then the story of a young Native American’s return from WWII with House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday (Harper Perennial, 2021). We will finish with selected short stories from Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House, 2008), set in early 2000s New England, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster, 2018), a dystopian novel set in a possible future. We will discuss the issues raised in each book for two weeks; any edition of these books may be used.