Prairie Wife Virtual Book Club: April 2025

Posted April 4, 2025 by Prairie Wife - 1 comment

It’s time to announce our book for the Prairie Wife Virtual Book Club: April 2025

This monthly Virtual Book Club is all thanks to Wind City Books, an Indie Bookstore in Downtown Casper, Wyoming.

Miranda from Wind City Books can ship our book club book WHEREVER YOU LIVE, so please use the link provided below to purchase your Prairie Wife Book Club books. I strongly encourage buying your book from Wind City Books. You’ll be supporting a local Indie Bookstore, and they can quickly ship the book directly to your home. If you order now, you’ll receive it in plenty of time to finish it before book club. You can also listen to the book through Libro.fm  It works just like Audible, but you have the option to support your local Indie Bookstore with your purchases.

So, how does The Prairie Wife Virtual Book Club Work?

It’s easy (I promise) and available to ANYONE who wants to join.

You don’t need social media because we’re doing it all with Zoom!

At our hour-long Virtual Book Club meeting, we will heavily discuss this month’s book using the questions given below the review as a guide.

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR THIS MONTH’S VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB: MONDAY, April 28, 2025 7 PM MST

The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree by India Hayford

I admit that I picked this book because I was captivated by the title and the book blurb. Then, when Miranda told me that Hayford was actually a local author, I was even more excited to read it for this month’s virtual book club. There’s a book signing at Wind City Books this Saturday, April 5th, from 11 to 1 p.m., if you want to stop by and pick up your copy in person and meet the author. Maybe she can even join us for our virtual meeting!

Here’s what the publisher had to say: Genevieve Charbonneau talks to ghosts and has a special relationship with rattlesnakes. In her travels, she’s wandered throughout the South, escaping a mental hospital in Alabama, working for a Louisiana circus, and dancing at a hoochy-kootch in Texas. Now for the first time in a decade, she’s allowed her winding path to bring her to the site of her grandmother’s Arkansas farmhouse, a place hallowed in her memory.

She intends only to visit briefly – to pay respects to her buried loved ones and leave. But a chance meeting with a haunted young Vietnam vet reconnects her with the remnants of a family she thought long gone, and their union becomes a catalyst for change and salvation. An abused woman and her daughters develop the courage to fight back, a ghost finds the path away from life, and a sanctimonious predator becomes the prey. In the process, Genevieve must choose between her longing for meaningful connection after years as an outsider and her equally excruciating impulse to run.

Written by a naturalist and set on the land where her family roots stretch back two centuries, The Song of the Blue Bottle Tree is a haunting story about letting go and the things we leave behind, the power of names, and the ties that bind. It is both harrowing and triumphant, a visceral Southern debut as otherworldly and beautiful as it is unflinching and wry.

PREP QUESTIONS FOR OUR VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB MEETING

• What do you think of the book’s title?
  • How does it relate to the book’s contents?
  • What other title might you choose?
• Which characters did you like best?
• Which character did you like least?
• Was there a time when you wished you could talk to one of the characters?
  • What would you have told them?
• What was your favorite part of the book?
• How did the setting impact the story?
• Did the book feel real to you?
• Did this book remind you of any other books?
• If you could ask the author anything, what would it be?

Categories: Book Reviews, Reviews

Tags: , book club, Historical Fiction, india hayword, indie books, indie bookstore, the song of the blue bottle tree, virtual book club