We are thrilled to welcome Skylark favorite back Steve Wiegenstein back to the shop to celebrate the launch of new novel, Bring Daybreak, on Tuesday, November 3. The festivities begin at 6:30! We hope to see you there!
One era ends and another begins in this thrilling and thought-provoking final book in the Daybreak series. Community matriarch Charlotte Turner, now in her 90s, prepares to leave the world. Her granddaughter Petey, a single woman who owns the community newspaper, feels unready to shoulder the responsibility. In the mid-1920s Missouri Ozarks, farmers are struggling and the Ku Klux Klan has resurfaced. A deep and unexpected romance with an out-of-town social reformer only complicates Petey’s life more. Petey has to draw deep on her resilient rural heritage to overcome the many challenges that face her as her community moves from the horse-and-buggy era to the modern age.
Bring Daybreak is rich in historical detail as it presents a little-seen side of the 1920s. Rural America, far from being the decadent Jazz Age playland we’re familiar with, was a scene of social struggle as reformers and reactionaries battled for the soul of America’s heartland. Petey Turner, a scrappy, idealistic small-town newspaperwoman, is a relatable hero in a story of struggle between prejudice and progress.
Steve Wiegenstein is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories, all set in the Ozarks. The novels (Slant of Light, This Old World, The Language of Trees, Land of Joys, and Bring Daybreak) follow the rise and fall of a fictional nineteenth-century utopian community and the life of its matriarch, Charlotte Turner. Steve grew up in the eastern Missouri Ozarks and worked there as a newspaper reporter before entering the field of higher education. He taught journalism, English, and communication for colleges and universities during his career, but is now retired from teaching and writes full-time. Steve lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he writes and blogs about rural and Ozarks issues at stevewiegenstein.wordpress.com. His short story collection Scattered Lights was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction. The son of a rural librarian, Steve received the Missouri Author Award from the Missouri Library Association in 2022.
