Karen Gettert Shoemaker featured speaker at College of Saint Mary’s Great Conversations
Omaha, Neb. – Prejudice, violence, faith, love and family provide themes for Great Conversations speaker Karen Gettert Shoemaker’s latest historical novel. But they could just as easily be themes for the world we live in today…
Karen Gettert Shoemaker, author of The Meaning of Names, is the featured speaker for this year’s Great Conversations luncheon at College of Saint Mary on Thursday, April 5. The WWI-era novel is the One Book One Nebraska selection for 2016, which is a program sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book, Humanities Nebraska, and Nebraska Library Commission. The Omaha public also selected The Meaning of Names as its Omaha Reads selection in 2014.
Set in 1918 Holt County, Nebraska, The Meaning of Names follows the fictional character of Gerda Vogel and her German-American family as it copes with not only the 1918 flu pandemic but also the prejudice and violence towards German-Americans during WWI. The Lincoln Journal Star wrote that “this slender volume is deceptive in size. It is a book of big themes, true history and serious art, focusing on our Nebraska of not so long ago.”
Although fictional, the Holt County native says the novel’s matrix was the family and local stories she heard while growing up. Shoemaker didn’t set out to write about Nebraska, as Willa Cather already had a formidable claim to that territory. But what Shoemaker knew about the place and its stories had a firm hold on her. She researched the subject thoroughly, almost obsessively, before ‘committing pen to paper.’
Shoemaker treads carefully around Willa Cather’s haunt of Nebraska, but the state looms large as a character in Names, and her portrayal of it brings that famous author to mind. Tim Schaffert, author of The Swan Gondola, said Names is “reminiscent of the fiction of Willa Cather and every bit as memorable.” Lee Martin (The Bright Forever: A Novel) described the novel as a haunting and tender story set in a time when “nationalism led to prejudice against German-Americans, a time with the influenza pandemic of 1918 killed millions…Shoemaker weaves an enduring story of faith, family and love…Gerda Vogel is a character I’ll remember always.”
Shoemaker’s first collection of short stories, Night Sounds and Other Stories won the 2003 Nebraska Book Award for Short Fiction. Her works have appeared in many journals, including Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, West Wind Review, Kalliope, Credo, Fine Lines, The Nebraska Review, and was anthologized in Times of Sorrow, Times of Grace: Writing by Women of the Great Plains, amongst others. Her writing awards include a Nebraska Press Association Award for Feature Writing, Vreeland Award, the Prairie Schooner/Mari Sandoz Award for Fiction, and a Merit Award from the Nebraska Arts Council.
An 11:30 a.m. book signing will precede the noon luncheon and Great Conversations presentation in CSM’s Mercy Hall Meeting Room. Cost for the event is $25 per person.
