Shadow Catcher Citywide Reads Book

The Santa Monica Public Library is pleased to announce The Shadow Catcher by Marianne Wiggins as the featured book for the 2009 Santa Monica Citywide Reads program. Santa Monica Citywide Reads is a community reading program that invites everyone to read and discuss the same novel in book clubs and other events held around the city. 2009 marks the seventh anniversary of the program.

In The Shadow Catcher, Marianne Wiggins intricately weaves two stories of family history, personal loss, and landscape. One narrative follows a fictional Marianne Wiggins who has written a book on Edward Curtis and is called to the death bed of her father, a man she knows died when she was a child.

The other narrative follows Edward Curtis and his family, who traveled across North America to photograph Native peoples through his imagination and lens at the turn of the twentieth century. Photographs from the Curtis archives and the Wiggins family album add to this reflection of myths and truths.

"The Shadow Catcher is a compelling story that explores - among other things - how photographic images shape the way we remember the past," said Carol Jago, incoming president of the National Council of Teachers of English and Citywide Reads Advisory Committee member. "I could not put it down."

Simon and Schuster published the novel in 2007. The Shadow Catcher was named a Best Book of the Year by the National Book Critics Circle, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Publisher Weekly.

Marianne Wiggins has written nine books, Evidence of Things Unseen which was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2003. She also won the Whiting Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989. She is currently an English Professor at the University of Southern California.

Santa Monica Citywide Reads will take place in March and April 2009, and will feature free public book discussion groups led by volunteer facilitators and held in libraries, bookstores, coffeehouses, and other venues. Related special events, including a presentation by the author, are being planned.

For more information about Citywide Reads, visit www.smpl.org/cwr, www.santamonicacitywidereads.blogspot.com, or call the Santa Monica Public Library at (310) 458-8600.