Coppell Reads

Thank you for another successful year of Coppell Reads! This year's selection, Remember Ben Clayton, was a huge hit! To see photos from our visit with Remember Ben Clayton author Stephen Harrigan, click here.

We would love to hear what you thought about Coppell Reads 2012. If you have suggestions for future Coppell Reads selections and programs, please contact the library.

What is Coppell Reads?

Coppell Reads is a city-wide event that encourages community members to read the same book at the same time and then participate in a series of community events celebrating the book. The mission of Coppell Reads is to support a sense of community and promote a love of reading.

About Remember Ben Clayton:

Francis “Gil” Gilheaney is a sculptor of boundless ambition, whose pride has driven him from New York into artistic exile in Texas just after World War I. His adult daughter, Maureen, serves as her father’s assistant, her own artistic ambitions set aside for his. When Lamar Clayton, an enigmatic, taciturn rancher, offers Gil a commission to create a memorial statue of his son, Ben, who was killed in the war, Gil seizes an opportunity to create what he thinks will be his greatest achievement.

As work proceeds on the statue, it becomes clear to Gil and Maureen that Lamar is guarding a secret that haunts his relationship with Ben even in death. But Gil is haunted as well: by the fear that his work will be forgotten and by a lie whose discovery could cost him his daughter’s love. As the novel unfolds, we are given a brilliant evocation of the brutal aftermath of World War I, and a deeply moving story about the bonds between fathers and children, and the purpose and power of art.

About the Author:

Stephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi.

His latest novel, Remember Ben Clayton, was published in May 2011 and praised by Booklist as a “stunning work of art” and by The Wall Street Journal as “a poignantly human monument to our history.”

Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers. He is also a founding member of the Texas Book Festival, and of Capital Area Statues, Inc., a non-profit organization that commissions and raises money for monumental works of sculpture celebrating the history and culture of Texas. He and his wife, Sue Ellen, have three daughters, Marjorie, Dorothy and Charlotte, and two grandchildren, Mason and Travis.

- excerpt provided by www.stephenharrigan.com