One Book, One ND Event featuring author John Enger

FREE ONLINE EVENT with Author John Enger

December 18th, 4-5pm CDT

Author John Enger

John Enger has always told stories for a living. As a journalist, he tracked down local legends and hermits, and put himself in hair raising situations to record the sort of voices rarely heard in media. His award-winning work reached one million listeners each week on Minnesota Public Radio, and countless more through the dozens of platforms that pick up his stories. He left journalism last year to pursue woodworking and fiction writing.

Truth can be slippery. Enger still chases it. Novels are made up. Lies, by definition. But in his debut novel, Radium, Enger portrays the world he sees. A version of rural America that can’t fit in a four minute radio story. He builds his characters with empathy — writes their flaws in clean lines. He gives them strength to rise up and be redeemed, or not redeemed, if they so choose. And there’s truth in that, as well. Is there not?

Radium

Radium is about two bad-luck brothers from a bad-luck town in the flat farmland of western Minnesota. Jim, the narrator, is fifteen and damaged, the result of a car accident years before that left him with a head injury and a tweaked view of the world. He sees his big brother, Billy Quinn, in near mythic terms. Billy is wild and strong and capable of things other men are not. They live together in a trailer house on the ditch-side of a beet field until Billy gets into bad trouble, and then they go on the run. That’s what wild young men like Billy--growing up rangy and unsupervised in the desperate middle of this country--do when trouble comes. They run. They drive cars fast. They go west. They live on the lam, always about three days from a federal manhunt. Laws are broken, but with an older brother his only true friend on earth--a brother he loves more than his own next breath--Jim justifies their deeds, willing to do...anything...to keep Billy free.

Moderator Bill Thomas

Bill started at Prairie Public Radio in 1999 as the first manager for the new public radio network formed with NDSU and UND. He came to North Dakota from working in Lincoln at Nebraska's Public Radio Network. Before that, he started small community stations, managed national program distribution, has been a program director, a station manager and a network manager in Champaign-Urbana, Los Angeles; Washington, DC; and St. Louis.

One Book, One ND events are sponsored by the Paris Family Foundation and Prairie Public 

HND Value Statement

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this {article, book, exhibition, film, program, database, report, Web resource}, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or Humanities North Dakota.

However, in an increasingly polarized world, we at Humanities North Dakota believe that being open-minded is necessary to thinking critically and rationally.

Therefore, our programs and classes reflect our own open-mindedness in the inquiry, seeking, and acquiring of scholars to speak at our events and teach classes for our Public University.

To that end, we encourage our participants to join us in stepping outside our comfort zones and considering other perspectives and ideas by being open-minded while attending HND events featuring scholars who hold a variety of opinions, some being opposite of our own held beliefs.

Humanities North Dakota classes and events are funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities