2023 Reading Challenge March Bonus Category: Connection to Iowa

"A breakneck procedural that is beautifully written and masterfully crafted, Erin Young's The Fields is a dynamite debut-crime fiction at its very finest. Some things don't stay buried. It starts with a body-a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. When Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations for the Black Hawk County Sheriff's...

"Local outcast Rigby Sellers lives in squalor on a dilapidated houseboat moored on the Mississippi River. With only stolen mannequins and the river to keep him company, Rigby begins to spiral from the bizarre to the threatening. As a year of drought gives way to a season of squalls, a girl is found trembling on the side of the road, claiming her boyfriend was murdered. The nearby town of Oscar turns their suspicions toward Sellers. Local Sheriff Amos...

Mildred Armstrong Kalish's "Little Heathens" is a compelling memoir of her hardscrabble life on an Iowa farm during the 1930s. With no electricity or indoor plumbing and with little heat or money on the farm, Mildred learns to find joy in the priceless blessings of life.

"The fascinating-and eerily timely-tale of the forgotten Depression-era psychologists who overthrew long-accepted racist and classist views of childhood development. "Doomed from birth" was how psychologist Harold Skeels described two toddler girls at the Orphans' Home in Davenport, Iowa, in 1934. Following prevailing eugenic beliefs, Skeels and his colleague Marie Skodak assumed that the girls had inherited their parents' low intelligence and sent...

Iowa is home to rolling hills, beautiful state parks, lush cornfields, and architecture that is unique to the state. With more than a dozen scenic highways & byways, and with 100 Things to Do in Iowa Before You Die as your guide, your next road trip will be an epic one for the record books. Did you know that you can stay in the last known hotel in the world designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Mason City? Hop on the Historic Hills Scenic Byway in southeast...

"An extraordinary memoir about finding wonder in everyday life. Nate Staniforth has spent most of his life and all of his professional career trying to understand wonder--what it is, where to find it, and how to share it with others. He became a magician because he learned at a young age that magic tricks don't have to be frivolous. Magic doesn't have to be about sequins and smoke machines--rather, it can create a moment of genuine astonishment. But...

Three daughters and their husbands are pulled into a triangle of love, jealousy, and fear when their father grows too old to manage the family's fertile thousand acre farm.

"At six years old, Antonia Rivera crossed the border from Mexico with nothing but the doll in her hands. Ajla Dizdarević's family brought traditions across the ocean after leaving a home torn apart by the Bosnian War. Sarah Elgatian's grandmother played cards and spoke of a country her Armenian-American grandchild had never known. Hieu Pham couldn't relate to all of her mother's Vietnamese traditions, but when she became a mother herself, everything...

On June 1, 2017, six people were killed at a Burger City franchise off I-80 near Jonny, Iowa. It was the bizarre and gruesome conclusion to nine months of alleged paranormal activity at the fast-food joint-events popularly known as "the Burger City Poltergeist."