Raffle tickets are on sale and auction bids are being accepted for the library’s Annual Fall Festival Fundraiser, which will take place Saturday, September 28, from noon to 4 p.m.
The raffle is for six packages of gift certificates to local restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, galleries, clothing stores and other retail establishments. Tickets are one for $5; three for $10; or seven for $20. For the first time this year, patrons can purchase tickets through the library’s website at www.cannonbeachlibrary.org, as well as in-person at the library (131 N. Hemlock in downtown Cannon Beach).
While at the library, patrons can place their bids in a silent auction for a variety of hotel stays and fun experiences. Patrons can bid on stays at the Ocean Lodge, the Hallmark Resort, the Inn at Haystack Rock and the Inn at Cannon Beach; some of these stays are bundled with wine, gourmet meals and theater tickets to create entertaining nights out on the town. Patrons can also bid on a gallery walk experience, as well as gift certificates for blown glass and pottery.
Tickets will be sold and auction bids will be accepted until the day of the Festival, when the winning raffle tickets will be drawn and auction winners will be announced. The day of the Festival will be filled with free, family-friendly activities, including a book and puzzle swap and crafting activities for children and adults. In addition to tasty treats, there will also be drawings for door prizes throughout the day for food, artwork, books, and other items
All items for the Fall Festival are donated by generous local merchants and hotel owners. Over 50 merchants and hotel owners have donated more than $5,000 in gift certificates and hotel stays. All proceeds from the fundraiser are used to support the library.
The 17th season of the library’s NW Author Speakers Series begins at 2 p.m., Saturday, September 7, when the library welcomes author and illustrator Kerilynn Wilson. Patrons can enjoy her talk in-person, or online through the library website (www.cannonbeachlibrary.org).
Wilson’s graphic novel, “The Faint of Heart” was awarded the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Graphic Literature. This work of speculative fiction tells the story of June, a high school student who still has her heart, although all those around her are electing to have their hearts removed in order to avoid sadness, anxiety and anger.
As June’s loneliness and sense of isolation increase, she finds an abandoned heart which she wants to use to make her heart-less sister normal again. “The Faint of Heart” has been described as “beautiful, tender, and relevant” and “vivid and haunting.” This is Wilson’s debut novel. Her next graphic novel, “One Foggy Christmas Eve,” will be released this month.
The Cannon Beach Reads book club will meet at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 18, to discuss “Demon Copperhead,” by award-winning novelist, essayist and poet Barbara Kingsolver.
This will be a hybrid meeting with participants able to take part in the discussion in-person at the library or virtually (contact book club coordinator Joe Bernt at berntj@ohio.edu for the Zoom link).
Kingsolver tells the story of Damon Fields, a young man who was born in a single-wide trailer in rural Lee County, Virginia, to a teenage, drug-addicted, single mother. His father, who died before Damon’s birth, had red hair and was called “Copperhead” because of a snake tattoo on his forearm. With his father’s red hair and a “bad” attitude, Damon inevitably earns the nickname Demon Copperhead.
Damon’s early childhood is bearable. His mother, who loves him, stays sober enough to keep a job at Walmart, and their neighbors help feed and take care of him. That all changes when Damon’s mother marries a controlling, abusive man who drives his emotionally fragile wife to a fatal overdose, and pushes Damon into a fractured foster care system.
After suffering the hunger, bone-grinding toil and loneliness of life as a foster child, Damon seems to have found the good life as a high school football star, only to lose it all after being injured and descending into opioid addiction, leaving his prospects for living a better life in doubt.
Kingsolver begins “Demon Copperhead” with a quote from “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. That is no accident because her book is a retelling of “David Copperfield,” right down to some of the characters’ names. Dickens, in his novel, illustrates the misery, hardships and social inequality suffered by the poor in Victorian England.
Kingsolver takes a page from Dickens when she shows her readers that, in modern-day Appalachian Lee County, similar problems still exist. Her realistic characters and carefully drawn plot speak to a lack of opportunities, poor educational institutions, destructive foster care systems and the devastating menace of drug addiction.
“Demon Copperhead” won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2023. Kingsolver’s other books include the novels “The Poisonwood Bible,” The Bean Trees,” “The Lacuna” and “The Unsheltered,” as well as the influential nonfiction work “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” which documents her family’s efforts to eat only locally grown food.
Phyllis Bernt will lead the discussion on September 18. Coffee and cookies will be provided at the library. The book club meets on the third Wednesday of each month at 7 p.m. New participants are always welcome, even if they haven’t read the book.
In August, the library added the following fiction titles: “The Goddess of Warsaw” by Lisa Barr, “The Instrumentalist” by Harriet Constable, “Pitch Dark” by Paul Doiron, “Sentinel” by Mark Greaney, “The Bright Sword” by Lev Grossman, “Shanghai” by Joseph Kanon, “The Horses” by Janina Matthewson, “Hard to Kill” by James Patterson and Mike Lupica and “By Any Other Name” by Jodi Picoult.
The eight mysteries added were “The Murders in Great Diddling” by Katharina Bivald, “The Rose Arbor” by Rhys Bowen, “It’s Elementary” by Elise Bryant, “The Dark Wives: A Vera Stanhope Novel” by Ann Cleeves, “The Lost Coast” by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman, “Spirit Crossing” by William Kent Krueger, “Fire and Bones” by Kathy Reichs and “This Is Why We Lied” by Karin Slaughter.
And finally these seven nonfiction books were added: “The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life” by Nathalie A. Chabrol, “Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich” by Richard J. Evans, “The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore” by Evan Friss, “That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America” by Amanda Jones, “I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine” by Daniel J. Levitan, “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap” by Louise Story and Ebony Reed and “Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation” by Brenda Wineapple.
