Dragonfly Books welcomes Luther College professor of English Amy Weldon for an author talk featuring her debut novel, Eldorado, Iowa. Weldon will talk about writing her book and sign books on Monday, September 9 at 7:00 p.m. at Dragonfly Books.

Weldon’s novel features a young physician’s wife, Sarah Archer, who in 1875 is settling into a new life on the Iowa frontier while expecting her first child. A survivor of the Civil War, she wrestles with troubling memories of her childhood on her family’s Alabama plantation, including her father’s suicide, her brother’s death, and the deprivations and dangers of war. Exploring the ties of love, anger, silence, and misunderstanding between women, the novel asks: how do we grow through and beyond what we think we know of our pasts in order to discover our true homes, our true lives, and our true paths into the future?

This event is sponsored by Dragonfly Books at 112 W. Water St., Decorah and is free and open to the public. To learn more about this and other events at Dragonfly Books, please visit www.dragonflybooks.com or contact us at events@dragonflybooks.com or 563-382-4275.

Dragonfly Books welcomes Decorah native and Luther graduate Lori Erickson for an author talk featuring her new book, Near the Exit: Travels with the Not-So-Grim Reaper. Erickson will talk about writing her book and sign books on Thursday, September 5 at 7:00 p.m. at Dragonfly Books. 

After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head-on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death, from Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and Mayan temples, to a Colorado cremation pyre and Day of the Dead celebrations, to Maori settlements and tourist-destination graveyards. Erickson reflects on mortality--the ways we avoid it, the ways we cope with it, and the ways life is made more precious by accepting it--in places as far away as New Zealand and as close as the nursing home up the street. Through her personal journey and her travels Erickson helps us to see that one of the most life-affirming things we can do is to invite death along for the ride. 

An Episcopal deacon, Lori Erickson is one of America’s top travel writers specializing in spiritual journeys. She’s the author of the memoir Holy Rover: Journeys in Search of Mystery, Miracles and God, which was a finalist for the 2017 Travel Book of the Year INDIES Award from Foreword Reviews. She lives in Iowa City with her husband Bob Sessions. 

Everyone is invited to join Dragonfly Books for this free event on Thursday, September 5 at 7:00 p.m. If you can't attend but would like a book, please call Dragonfly Books at 563-382-4275 to reserve a copy and have it autographed for you.