The 2023 One Book Siouxland selection is....

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The 2023 One Book Siouxland selection is Accidental Rancher by Eliza Blue. In Accidental Rancher, Blue shares a collection of short stories about her life on the high plains, bringing a new voice and a musician's grace to the culture of rural America. 

As Accidental Rancher is locally published by South Dakota magazine, it is currently only available for check out in regular print.

 

Read the book and then attend events that complement Accidental Rancher.

Participate in the Stamp Your Quilt challenge. Pick up a One Book Siouxland Guide at any Siouxland Libraries location and mark off events that you attend and other challenges that you complete. Get four stamps and return it to any library by April 28 to be entered to win a prize!

One Book Events

One Book Siouxland Kick-Off: Sustainability Expo
April 1, 2023: 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.
Downtown Library
In celebration of Accidental Rancher and in partnership with Dakota Rural Action, browse local vendors highlighting their sustainability practices. Take part in storytime, children's activities, and the FarmHer: South Dakota display from the South Dakota Agricultural Heritage Museum.

Pioneer Experience
Registration Required; Save your spot here
April 11, 2023: 3:30 - 5 p.m.
Ronning Branch Library
Siouxland Heritage Museum Education staff dressed in historic clothing will talk about what it was like to homestead in Dakota. First-hand accounts from diaries and letters as well as historic reproduction props will be used to tell the pioneer story.

A History of Traditional Western Music by Allen and Jill KirkhamA Musical Performance
Registration Required; Save your spot here
April 15, 2023: 10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Downtown Library
The Kirkhams present a mix of oral history and live music (acoustic guitar, bass fiddle, mandolin, and harmonica) of public domain traditional western music from the 1840s-1920s (trail drives and Black Hills mining era, Charles Badger Clark era), key classic western movie era 1930s to 1960s, contemporary western and original western music, with background and history behind the songs.

An Introduction to Common Roots Seed Library
Registration Required; Save your spot here
April 19, 2023: 6 - 7 p.m.
Ronning Branch Library
Learn about the role seed libraries play in resilient communities, food economies, and how to use it for your gardening needs.

Songs from the Soil: Author Talk with Eliza Blue
Registration Required; Save your spot here
April 22, 2023: 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Old Courthouse Museum
200 W. 6th St.
Sioux Falls, SD 57104

Eliza Blue will perform music and read from her book "Accidental Rancher."

  

 

About the Author

When Eliza Blue first moved to northwestern South Dakota, she didn't plan on staying long. But then she fell in love with a Perkins County rancher -- and the land, the wind, the livestock and the giant blue expanse of a West River              

One Book Siouxland logo 2022Winter Counts book cover

The 2022 One Book Siouxland selection was David Heska Wanbli Weiden's award winning Winter Counts, a thriller set in and around South Dakota’s Rosebud Indian Reservation with complex characters, believable conflicts, and an urgent message about Native culture, as well as, the inequities in education opportunities and criminal justice.

     

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the 2021 One Book Siouxland took place in September. Two books were selected: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett M. Graff.

logoThe Great Alone

The 2020 One Book Siouxland selection was Kristin Hannah's bestselling The Great Alone, a gripping portrayal of a family seeking a fresh beginning in Alaska in the 1970s.

In 2019, participants read Caroline Fraser's Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Prairie Fires won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, as well as being named to New York Times' "10 Best Books of the Year.


In 2018, One Book Siouxland participants read Fredrik Backman's best-selling book, A Man Called Ove. Library staff, in partnership with local library users, selected this story because of its theme--"people can change, even if they are set in their ways"--as well as the strong Swedish and Scandinavian heritage that is part of this region and the book.