Adult Book Club

Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Susan Crandall

Please join us for one of the next meetings of our Adult Book Club on Tuesday, November 10th, and Friday, November 13th.  November’s Book Club selection is “Whistling Past the Graveyard” by Susan Crandall.   A synopsis of the book follows:

In the summer of 1963, nine-year-old spitfire Starla Claudelle runs away from her strict grandmother’s Mississippi home. Starla hasn’t seen her momma since she was three—that’s when Lulu left for Nashville to become a famous singer. Starla’s daddy works on an oil rig in the Gulf, so Mamie, with her tsk-tsk sounds and her bitter refrain of “Lord, give me strength,” is the nearest thing to family Starla has. After being put on restriction yet again for her sassy mouth, Starla is caught sneaking out for the Fourth of July parade. She fears Mamie will make good on her threat to send Starla to reform school, so Starla walks to the outskirts of town, and just keeps walking. . . . If she can get to Nashville and find her momma, then all that she promised will come true: Lulu will be a star. Daddy will come to live in Nashville, too. And her family will be whole and perfect. Walking a lonely country road, Starla accepts a ride from Eula, a black woman traveling alone with a white baby. The trio embarks on a road trip that will change Starla’s life forever. She sees for the first time life as it really is—as she reaches for a dream of how it could one day be.

Copies of the book are available for checkout at the library.

What: Adult Book Club

When/Where:  Tuesday, Nov. 10, at 1:30 pm – East Troy Lions Public Library

When/Where:   Friday, Nov. 13, at 1:30 p.m. – East Troy Lions Public Library

East Troy Lions Public Library Adult Book Club Reading List 2026

January: Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara Brunsvold

February: House Rules by Jodi Picoult

March: Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali

April: Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

May: The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife by Anna Johnston

June: Under the Tulip Tree by Michelle Shocklee

July:  Her Hidden Genius by Marie Benedict writing as Heather Terrell

August: The Little Liar by Mitch Albom

September: Deserving of Murder by Mary Ann Noe

October: Forty Autumns by by Nina Willner

November: Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall

December: Following Atticus by Tom Ryan