Score a couple more for the East Siders!
One book has been dropped at the Kansas Heart Hospital on Webb Road. It is in one of the many waiting areas out there--you'll just have to hunt.

Closer in, I saw a copy of "What the Thunder Said" at a periodontists' office on South Hillside on Monday. I didn't pick it up because I already have a copy. If you have to visit your dentist, maybe a free book to read will make it all go better. Let us know.

Another book drop: This one is at Penney's in Town West Square. I know, that is a big shopping center, Penney's is a big store. But if I were you, I would go straight to the Women's Lounge, adjacent to the beauty salon. But hurry, because that is a busy place.

Operation Book Drop is in full swing in West Wichita, with five recent drops made in doctors' waiting rooms, four of those west of the Big Ditch.

Think West Wichita for three of them, (same family physician complex, different waiting rooms.)

The fourth drop was made a couple miles farther west, in a dentist's waiting room.

But these are busy places so you'll have to hurry to catch a drop.

The fifth book was dropped in a waiting room just off West Street, south of 13th Wednesday, July 2, 2008. Maybe you can catch it there if you are lucky.

If you happen to catch one of these drops, let us know via the address on the bookmark. And let us know what you think of the book.

Thanks to Jeanne Cardenas, Professor Emerita of English and Newman University, for telling us a little about Janet Peery, author.
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Janet Peery, author of What the Thunder Said, grew up in Kansas (her parents still live in Haysville) and knows well the landscape that figures so prominently in this, her second novel.

After a BA degree from WSU in 1975 and a career in Speech Pathology, Peery decided to follow her dream of being a writer. So she went back to WSU, earned an MFA in Fiction in 1992. In 1993 she moved with her three daughters to Norfolk , Virginia, where she joined the faculty at Old Dominion University of Virginia, where she continues to write and teach.

While a student here in Wichita, she wrote short stories for literary journals, earning the Pushcart Prize, and a place in The Best American Short Stories of 1993.

Peery’s first book also appeared in 1993. Alligator Dance is a collection of short stories, some of which point toward characterizations, landscapes and themes in her two novels.

The story “Nosotros” was the inspiration for her first novel, The River Beyond the World published in 1996. It is a work Peery admits to struggling with for six years. The book won rave reviews and was one of five National Book Award finalists.

Her second novel, What the Thunder Said, was published last year, with the softbound edition available since June 2008. While Peery’s first novel is set in South Texas along both sides of the Rio Grande, her latest is set in South Central Kansas and Northern Oklahoma, and tells of a family that struggles through the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.

Writer’s Digest Magazine named Peery one of “25 Writers to Watch in the Next Decade,” a list of noted authors whom the magazine believes could have a major impact on fiction in the years ahead. Among Peery’s other honors and awards are the Whiting Foundation Writers Award, the America Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

She is also a recipient of the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, that state’s highest honor for faculty at their colleges and universities.

Peery will be in Wichita for a public lecture at Newman University Thursday, Oct. 23, will conduct writing workshops for students on Oct. 24 and will be a guest at Newman University’s 75th anniversary dinner Oct 25.