Join us for a spirited book discussion via Zoom, where we'll be sharing our thoughts on The Home Place by J. Drew Lanham, which was selected as this year's Longwood Gardens Community Read.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina -- a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" -- has been home to generations of Lanhams. Given their family name by slaveholders, and often buffeted by the winds of history, the Lanhams have created a personal legacy of grit and affection even in the midst of hard times. In The Home Place, readers meet a number of these determined people, including the young Drew, who recalls falling in love with the rich natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity" -- to find joy and freedom in the same land his ancestors were tied to by forced labor, and then to be a black man in a profoundly white field.

By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a remarkable meditation on nature and belonging. This is at once a deeply moving memoir and a riveting exploration of the contraditions of black identity in the rural South -- and in America today.

Copies of The Home Place are available through the Delaware Library Catalog. As this is a virtual event, registration is required. Attendees will receive the information for the Zoom room upon registration, with a follow-up reminder e-mail the afternoon of the event.

All are welcome to this stimulating conversation. Those who wish to simply discuss books and share what they've been reading lately are also invited.