Books & Brews Book Club

Our book group meets the second Tuesday of each month except December. We are into our second year. Currently, we have 11 members that attend regularly. Each of us has already chosen a book for a particular month.

Yesterday’s meeting discussed a book I mentioned in an earlier post; “if the creek don’t rise”, by Leah Weiss, a local (Lynchburg) author. Yesterday we had a treat – she accepted our invitation to come and talk to our group!

She spoke and read for the first hour and then left to get ready for a talk at the local library. That left us to discuss it amongst ourselves. But the best part of the meeting was listening to her talk about the book and her writing.

Leah said the book began over 10 years ago when she submitted a 1,500-word short story for a writing competition and won! That story formed, she said, the first and last chapters of the book. All she had to do, she said, was to write the 300 pages in between!

Since each chapter was written from a different point of view of a person in the story, it was interesting to hear the author tell us how she researched each and how she tried to get into the mind of each.

She is working on her second book now, set in 1944 eastern North Carolina, and it involves German POW camps. A sequel to “creek” is planned after that.

I told Ms. Weiss (she is married and brought her husband, Dave, a quiet gentleman, who went off to the library to read its copy of “1776”, by David McCullough, our February book, while we had our meeting) that I found the book depressing. She remarked that towards the end of her writing, it gave her some very strong emotions as well, as the story reached its climax.

I think we were all in agreement that we enjoyed having an author come and would like to do it again.




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