Lou Hoover is one of the less prominent first ladies of the last century but author Anne Dunlap writes about this extraordinary woman in her 2022 book, A woman of Adventure: The Life and Times of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. In her younger days, she learned to handle a rifle and ride a horse as well as anyone. She graduated from Stanford with a degree in music and physical education and in later years provided anonymous gifts to women and men for their education. After her marriage to Herbert Hoover in 1899, they began a life of equality and adventure traveling all over the world and later becoming President and First Lady of the United States. She is sometimes overshadowed by the next First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, but had a very remarkable life of her own.
Readers might also enjoy novelist Jane Smiley taught English and creative writing at Iowa State from 1981-1996 and later moved to California and taught at the University of California-Riverside. One of her books at Rippey Library shelves is her fiction book A Thousand Acres, the Pulitzer Prize winner in 1991.This is a very complex and often disturbing story of the lives of three daughters, their families and their father who owns a thousand acres. The story of the family dynamics and their connection to the land is narrated by the oldest daughter, Ginny.. Another of Jane Smiley’s books is Some Luck, published and cutting-edge 2014. Each chapter of this book shares a year in the life of the Langdon family from 1920 on their family farm in Denby, Iowa. Intriguing books for interesting summer reading.
-Nancy Hanaman