Banned Book Club
Wednesday, February 26 | 6:30 – 8pm | Lounge
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys,
and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

Devil in the Grove is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that chronicles racial injustice in 1949. It draws on previously unpublished material, including FBI case files and NAACP legal defense fund files. The book has been praised by critics, including Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and Junot Diaz.
Arrowhead Library System only has 7 copies available but is also available as an e-Book and Audio Book.
It’s available for purchase online for $15
or an audio version is available on Audible.
Do your best to read the book before the discussion.
Every year, books are banned and challenged in public and school libraries, usually because they fall somewhere on a wide spectrum of appropriateness. Often a single parent (or someone who doesn’t have a child in the school district) can challenge a book, which effectively removes it from the shelves pending a review. Many children (and adults) get their reading books from their school or public library, so removing them from the shelf makes them inaccessible to that reader, effectively banning them. We rebelliously read these banned books and discuss what they are about and why they have been banned.
Questions? Contact Dianne Edson – [email protected]
Below is reading schedule for 2025
- 4/9/2025 – Lucky by Alice Sebold
- 5/14/2025 – And Tango Makes Three by Justine Peterson and Peter Parnell
- 7/2/2025 – People Kill People by Ellen Hopkins
- 8/13/2025 – Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold
- 9/24/2025 – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Fagran Foer
- 11/5/2025 – Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur