(April 2026) In Print…
A Monthly Literature Column by Izzy Stringham
Libby Page has hit a nerve with her new novel This Book Made Me Think of You. The story centers around Tilly Nightingale, a young woman learning to navigate her life as a widow after her husband Joe passed away. When Tilly gets a call from her local bookshop telling her there’s a book for her to pick up, she is shocked to learn that her husband left her a year of books to pick up, one for each month, before he died. As the year progresses, Tilly is challenged to keep living, learning and growing, even though her loss threatened to drown her. With several excellent side characters including the earnest bookseller Alfie, and her plucky sister Harper, Tilly learns to live, and maybe even open her heart again to love. A feel-good novel without being corny, This Book Made Me Think of You is a poignant examination of grief, change, love and the power of books. If a pick-me-up is in order, this novel will fit the bill.
In The Rest of Our Lives, by Ben Markovits, Tom Layward drops his youngest daughter off at Carnegie Mellon to start college. Instead of going home to his wife in New York and deal with the widening gap in their relationship, he keeps just driving west. What unfolds is a road trip of revisiting the past, old friends, old loves and old dreams, to maybe realize that the future coming might be just right, and life is not over yet. The Rest of Our Lives is a funny and tender novel and Tom’s relationships with family and friends are noticed keenly. What does it mean to grow older, what happens to dreams set aside, is it even possible to ever know a spouse…or yourself?
Some family we are born with, and some family we choose. Tayari Jones’s newest novel Kin came out in February to much fanfare and a nod from Oprah’s Bookclub, and is a beautifully written reflection on mothers, daughters, relationships and love. Two childhood friends, Vernice and Annie, are navigating growing up as chosen sisters. Both girls lost their mothers as babies and were raised as “cradle friends” by their aunts and grandmothers. Vernice heads to Spelman College with her dead mother very much on her mind, and Annie leaves with friends for Memphis to try and find her own mother who abandoned her in infancy. The drama builds in the second half as the girls struggle with school, jobs, first loves and marriage. Set against the burgeoning Civil Rights movement, Jones writes with compassion and insight into her character's circumstances. Ultimately a book about love, Kin is a lovely slow-burn novel to savor and enjoy.
In local literary news, Basalt photojournalist Pete McBride has a brand new book out. Witness to Water is not one of Pete’s classic photo books, but a narrative on the Colorado River, the lifeblood of the American West. McBride has traveled the entire length of the river, from its headwaters in the Never Summer Mountains, all the way to its end as a trickle of water at the Sea of Cortez. Witness to Water recounts his trips paddling the length of the river and also hiking above the water through the Grand Canyon. For anyone who cares about water in the West, the Colorado River or just enjoys a good adventure, this new book is one to seek out. As Kevin Fedarko writes in his introduction, “none, to the best of my knowledge, has a longer, deeper or more passionate relationship with the Colorado than Pete McBride.” There is perhaps no one better to advocate for the river that we all depend on so much.
