Library to sponsor reading event

A community event dubbed as “Everyone is Reading” begins today at Marion City Library.

Patrons are encouraged to stop by the library to borrow a copy of the book chosen for this year’s read. They will meet at 7 p.m. March 6 to discuss it.

“Hillbilly Elegy,” by J.D. Vance, is a passionate and personal story of what he and other working-class Americans are experiencing as their numbers decline.

The Vance family story begins in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love” and moved from Kentucky to Ohio, hoping to escape poverty. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually, their grandchild, Vance, graduated from Yale Law School.

However, the book looks deeper into the family’s life, revealing how they struggled with the demands of their new middle-class life and never were fully able to escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.

A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. It is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of the country.