The final meeting of the Hickory Reading Club year (September-May) was May eighth, in the Hickory Baptist Church fellowship hall, and included lemon-themed decor and a potluck buffet.
Stacey Cook's devotional was based on her personal journal of pets loved and lost. She gained members' empathy by paralleling personalities and differing levels of love, patience, and God's grace needed to deal with pets and people.
The Club experienced an unusual "from the source" pleasure: Mississippi author Ramona Bridges was guest speaker. Her trilogy Sweet By and By (2009), Standing on the Promises (2012), and An Unclouded Day (2013) traces the tumultuous, complicated lives of generations of the Warren-Coulter-Graham families. Bridges's work, called atypical "historical fiction fiction," reflects her drive to discover and preserve family memories, particularly as related by her "Granny." Discussion of transitioning from persons to characters, using handwritten drafts, depending on self-publishing and promoting, differing with a non-Southern editor of very Southern material, and learning something of the world of screenplays gave listeners an appreciative inside look. As a biographical theme, the author emphasized her lifelong fascination with the intrinsic mystique of specific words and their power to trigger narratives.
