All Iowa Reads Book Discussion

The Marshalltown Public Library will be holding All Iowa Reads book discussions on July 11, 2024 at 2:00pm and 6:00pm in the Community Meeting Rooms.

The Seed Keeper  by Diane Wilson is the All Iowa Reads pick for adults for 2024. The novel follows Rosalie Iron Wing, who has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.

On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron — women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.

Established in 2003, the purpose of All Iowa Reads is to foster a sense of unity through reading. The program encourages Iowans statewide to come together in their communities to read and talk about a single book title in the same year.

Copies of The Seed Keeper can be picked up at the library’s Check Out Desk. eBook and downloadable audiobook copies of the book are available on Bridges.   The discussions are free and open to the public.  Please contact the library at 641-754-5738 ext. 2 for more information.