Meeting Tuesday Night - Special Treat!

Want to know more about the Pulpwood Queens and find out how it all began? Join us for our first Red River Pulpwood Queen meeting tomorrow night at 6:30 at Shreveport's own Columbia Cafe for wine, good food, and a chance to meet the original Pulpwood Queen Kathy Patrick and daughters!

Spoon - Discussion Questions

Author, Robert Greer has now confirmed he will be joining Fannie Flagg, Pat Conroy, Rick Bragg and about 40 or more authors at our 11th Anniversary Girlfriend Weekend, January 13 - 16, 2011! This is our book to READ of the month of The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs. - Kathy Patrick

Spoon: A Novel
By Robert Greer

Questions for Discussion


1. Is there a particular event or scene that influenced the outcome of the book more than another?

2. How do you feel about Spoon as a person? Would you be friends with him? Do you think he’s clairvoyant?

3. How much does history affect each of the characters and their relationships with one another?

4. In what ways is Spoon a traditional Western? Are there ways in which it challenges this genre classification?

5. What was unique about the setting and how did it enhance or take away from the story?

6. What specific themes did the author emphasize throughout the novel? What do you think he is trying to get across to the reader?

7. Do the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?

8. How do characters change or evolve throughout the course of the story? What events trigger such changes?

9. Did certain parts of the book make you uncomfortable? If so, why did you feel that way? Did this lead to a new understanding or awareness of some aspect of your life you might not have thought about before?

10. In what ways did you identify with the situations and/or characters?

11. What major emotions did the story evoke in you as a reader?

12. Many of the ranch owners and families agree that they would die for their land. To what extent does concern for land/property continue today? What would you die for?

LA Past Book Selections Worth Reading

The Mercy of Thin Air - by Ronlyn Domingue

New Orleans, 1920s. Raziela Nolan is in the throes of a magnificent love affair when she dies in a tragic accident. In an instant, she leaves behind her one true love and her dream of becoming a doctor--but somehow, she still remains. Immediately after her death, Razi chooses to stay between--a realm that exists after life and before whatever lies beyond it.

From this remarkable vantage point, Razi narrates the stories of her lost love, Andrew, and the relationship of Amy and Scott, a couple whose house she haunts almost seventy-five years later. The Mercy of Thin Air entwines these two fateful and redemptive love stories that echo across three generations. From ambitious, forward-thinking Razi, who illegally slips birth control guides into library books; to hip Web designer Amy, who begins to fall off the edge of grief; to Eugenia, caught between since the Civil War, the characters in this wondrous novel sing with life. Evoking the power of love, memory, and time, The Mercy of Thin Air culminates in a startling finish that will leave readers breathless.

The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish - by Elise Blackwell

Set in southern Louisiana in the weeks preceding the great flood of 1927, this novel depicts a place and way of life about to be forever changed. On the verge of manhood and a stone’s throw of the rising Mississippi River, Louis Proby is pulled between his love of the natural world and the glittering temptations of New Orleans, between the beautiful Nanette Lançon and a father who no longer seems larger-than-life, between the simplicity of childhood and the complicated decisions of adulthood.

Louis comes of age at a time when the country is coming of age. In Louisiana, it’s a time when the powerful prove themselves willing to sacrifice the poor to protect their position. As the people of Cypress Parish go about their daily lives, bankers in New Orleans are plotting to alter those lives irrevocably. Like so many calamities, the one that befalls Cypress Parish has both natural and human causes.

Based on historical events and narrated on the eve of another disaster, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish tells the story of a young man growing up in a time and place not quite like any other. And in doing so it reveals the complexity of our own relationship to the past. This a beautifully turned novel of love and natural history, married to the shadowy politics of Louisiana, a novel about what manhood means now and what it meant in the south in the 1920s.

Cane River - by Lalita Tademy

It was here, on a medium-sized Creole plantation owned by a family named Derbanne, that author Lalita Tademy found her family's roots-and the stories of four astonishing women who battled vast injustices to create a legacy of hope and achievement. They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the twentieth century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms. Here amid small farmhouses and a tightly knit community of French-speaking slaves, free people of color, and whites, Tademy's great-great-great-great grandmother Elisabeth would bear both a proud heritage and the yoke of slavery. Her youngest daughter, Suzette, would be the first to discover the promise-and heartbreak-of freedom. Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene would use determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independence. And Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, would fight to secure her children's just due and preserve their future against dangerous odds.

Pretty Pink Popcorn!

Pretty Pretty Princess Pink Party Popcorn
from Erin Cooks

Popcorn
Vegetable Oil or Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
8 ounces of good White Chocolate
Red Food Coloring

Pop a batch of popcorn. The stove top method is best, but you could also use microwave popcorn if you must — just try to avoid the flavored kind. Either way you will need approximately 8 cups of popcorn.

Spread the popcorn over a baking sheet lined with a silpat or wax paper. Pick out any unpopped kernels — you don’t want anyone to break a tooth!

Melt 8 ounces of white chocolate until smooth. You can use a double-boiler to melt the chocolate, or put it in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time on medium power, stirring after each round. Once the chocolate is smooth, add a few drops of food coloring, and stir to blend.

Use a spoon to drizzle the melted chocolate across the popcorn. Mix the popcorn around with the spoon to evenly distribute the chocolate. Then place the baking sheet in the refridgerator for 20 minutes to allow the chocolate to harden. Finally, serve and enjoy!

Feather Boa Doughnuts

Baked Feather Boa Doughnuts
Baked Doughnut recipe adapted from Heidi Swanson’s website 101 Cookbooks.
Makes 1 1/2 – 2 dozen medium doughnuts.

1 1/3 cups warm milk, 95 to 105 degrees (divided)
1 packet active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
2 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour
A pinch or two of nutmeg, freshly grated
1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

1 1/2 cups shredded coconut
2 cups confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4-6 tablespoons milk (depending on your desired consistency)
2-4 drops of red food coloring (depending on your desired shade of pink)

Place 1/3 cup of the warm milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Stir in the yeast and set aside for five minutes or so. Be sure your milk isn’t too hot or it will kill the yeast. Stir the butter and sugar into the remaining cup of warm milk and add it to the yeast mixture. With a fork, stir in the eggs, flour, nutmeg, and salt – just until the flour is incorporated. With the dough hook attachment of your mixer beat the dough for a few minutes at medium speed. This is where you are going to need to make adjustments – if your dough is overly sticky, add flour a few tablespoons at a time. Too dry? Add more milk a bit at a time. You want the dough to pull away from the sides of the mixing bowl and eventually become supple and smooth. Turn it out onto a floured counter-top, knead a few times (the dough should be barely sticky), and shape into a ball.

Transfer the dough to a buttered (or oiled) bowl, cover, put in a warm place (I turn on the oven at this point and set the bowl on top), and let rise for an hour or until the dough has roughly doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and roll it out 1/2-inch thick on your floured countertop. Most people (like myself) don’t have a doughnut cutter, instead I use a 2-3 inch cookie cutter to stamp out circles. Transfer the circles to a parchment-lined baking sheet and stamp out the smaller inner circles using a smaller cutter. If you cut the inner holes out any earlier, they become distorted when you attempt to move them. Cover with a clean cloth and let rise for another 45 minutes.

Bake in a 375 degree oven until the bottoms are just golden, 8 to 10 minutes – start checking around 8. While the doughnuts are baking, combine the confectioners sugar, milk, vanilla, and food coloring in a medium bowl. Place the coconut in a separate bowl.

Remove the doughnuts from the oven and let cool for just a minute or two. Dip each one in the icing, and than sprinkle the coconut onto the top of the doughnut. Eat immediately if not sooner.

List of Ark-La-Tex Authors

• Kathy Patrick - The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide To Life - Jefferson TX
• Charlaine Harris - Sookie Stackhouse (Southern Vampire) novels - Magnolia AR
• Michelle McCrary - Dead Set: A Zombie Anthology - Shreveport LA
• Judy Christie - Hurry Less, Worry Less series, Gone to Green - NW Louisiana
• Mitchel Whitington - Ghost In My Suitcase, Ghosts of East Texas - Jefferson, TX
• Gary Joiner - One Damn Blunder From Beginning to End, The Red River Campaign - Shreveport, LA
• William Joyce - Big Time Olie, George Shrinks, A Day with Wilbur Robinson - Shreveport, LA
• Eric Brock - Shreveport history series, Images of America series - Shreveport LA

Know someone else you want me to add to the list? Let me know!

Support Ark-La-Tex Authors!

Charlaine Harris' popular heroine Sookie Stackhouse is back on another adventure with her vampire and fairy friends in Dead In The Family! Read the first chapter here and pick up your copy in bookstores now to support authors in Ark-La-Tex area!

Author and my great friend Deborah LeBlanc of Lafayette, La will soon release her new book Ghost Box. Book one in the Ghost Tracker series, you can read the synopsis here.