Sheri has selected How to Read a Book by Monica Wood for our September read.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…
In this emotional book club fiction, Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher.
Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest.
Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.
When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.
How to Read a Book is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about forgiveness, letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Monica Wood—novelist, memoirist, and playwright—is the recipient of the Sarah Josepha Hale Award for excellence in the arts in New England, the Constance Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities in Maine, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award. Her bestselling novels include How to Read a Book, which was listed on the Texas Library Association’s “Lariat List” of the 25 best books of 2025, a finalist for the Westport Literary Prize, and winner of the New England Society in the City of New York Book Award for fiction. The novel has been published in Spain, the Czech Republic, the UK, Hungary, Russia, Greece, Germany, and Croatia, among other countries. Her previous novel, The One-in-a-Million Boy, was also widely published internationally. Her other novels, Any Bitter Thing, Ernie’s Ark, and My Only Story, have also won awards and made bestseller lists.
Monica is also the author of the memoir When We Were the Kennedys, a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award. Her widely anthologized short stories have won the Pushcart Prize and been featured on Public Radio International. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared in Oprah, the New York Times, Literary Hub, Down East, the San Francisco Chronicle, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and many other publications. She is the author of several books for aspiring writers (The Pocket Muse 1, The Pocket Muse 2, and Description).
Her three plays—Papermaker, The Half-Light, and Saint Dad—debuted at Portland Stage in sold-out productions before moving on to subsequent productions in various parts of the country. These plays were recently published as a collection called Three Plays by Monica Wood.
Born into a large Irish-Catholic family of storytellers in the papermill town of Mexico, Maine, Monica fell in love with the written word at the age of four, writing letters to her oldest sister, who was away at college. Like most writers, Monica discovered the joy of reading early on, but as a professional writer she bloomed late. By the time her first novel appeared when she was 40, she had a trail of other work behind her, including stints as a nurse aide, an insurance clerk, a club singer, and an eight-year career as a high school guidance counselor.
When she’s not writing, you can find her on the road meeting readers, visiting book clubs online, or out birdwatching with friends. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband, Dan Abbott. She is currently catless, but probably not for long.
