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Jennifer Paddock

Mabee-Simpson Library, Lyon College

A Secret Word
by Fort Smith Author Jennifer Paddock

Jennifer Paddock

Mabee-Simpson Library

September 22
9 AM

 

Publisher’s Weekly (February 9, 2004) says:  "Paddock’s striking debut is an intricately balanced story of three girls from Fort Smith, Ark., linked for life by a high school tragedy…This is a subtle, surprising first novel, with unforgettable characters, a quiet sense of place and a nuanced exploration of the secrets, loves, despairs, friends and relatives that shape our lives."   Please come and meet Ms. Paddock and join us for a lively discussion of her new book!

A Secret Word, the coming-of-age story of three young women from Fort Smith, Arkansas, has been selected as the featured book for the Center for the Book’s on-going series of author programming held in libraries and bookstores throughout Arkansas. Author Jennifer Paddock will tour the state from September 16-24, 2004, to visit with Arkansans about her book, fiction writing, and the issues that are raised in her book.

Jennifer Paddock was born and raised in Fort Smith, Arkansas. She received her M.A. in creative writing from New York University, and her fiction has appeared in Stories from the Blue Moon Café, The North American Review, and Other Voices. She lives with her husband, the writer Sidney Thompson, in Fairhope, Alabama.

Paddock’s debut novel A Secret Word is a story of friendship and family, growing up and growing apart. It follows three young women from their high school years in Arkansas through their early thirties, when they each take separate paths in life.

While sneaking off to Fort Smith’s Hardscrabble County Club for lunch one afternoon, the three young friends witness the fatal car crash of their high school’s star running back. Tacitly bound to each other because of this incident, they continue to weave in and out of each other’s lives, both directly and indirectly, as they try to make sense of dead-end jobs, deadbeat boyfriends, love, family, and life in the big city.

Ms. Paddock joins a list of authors featured in Center for the Book programming that includes Terry Kay, Douglas Kelley, Rick Bragg, Governor Sidney S. McMath, and Sandra Cisneros.

The Center for the Book’s statewide reading program, If All Arkansas Read the Same Book was developed several years ago to encourage reading, book discussion, and adult programming in the state’s libraries. To date, The Center for the Book has presented programming in this series in 42 libraries and bookstores across the state. If All Arkansas Read the Same Book provided the catalyst for development of AETN public television’s program On The Same Page and KUAR Public Radio’s program, Book Club of the Air. In addition, The Center for the Book received grant funding from the Arkansas Humanities Council and Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation in 2004 to present a program for area high school students at the Sufficient Grounds Coffeehouse in Little Rock in conjunction with Sandra Cisneros’s visit to Arkansas last spring.

Center for the Book coordinator Jane Thompson estimates that over 3500 individuals to date have participated in book discussion programming in conjunction with If All Arkansas Read the Same Book.