Author to visit Adrian District Library to discuss book about Bath school bombing

ADRIAN — The 2022 Michigan Notable Books Author Tour is making a stop in Adrian and will be at the Adrian District Library in downtown Adrian at 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 2.

The library, 143 E. Maumee St., will welcome Michigan Notable author John Smolens, who will present on his 2022 Michigan Notable Books winner, “Day of Days,” a fictional retelling of the 1927 school bombing in Bath, Michigan. According to a news release from the library, Smolens examines in his book how such a trauma ends up scarring one’s life “after the dead are laid to rest,” and how a devastated, but resilient, American village copes with the tragedy.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase. Cash and checks will be the only accepted forms of payment. Smolens will also sign the purchased copies.

The discussion is offered at no cost and is open to the community. An Adrian District Library card is not needed in order to attend. Registration is not required.

Smolens’ visit to the library is made possible by the Library of Michigan and Michigan Humanities, which is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“We are so excited to be hosting Professor Smolens as part of the Michigan Notable Books Author Tour,” adult and teen services librarian Jennifer Noble said in the release. “It is always a privilege to have authors come in to discuss their works, but it’s especially gratifying that the Library of Michigan scheduled John for our tour stop, given this community’s interest in Michigan history.”

Smolens is a professor emeritus from Northern Michigan University, where he taught in the English department and served as the university’s director of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing. He has published 12 works of fiction, 11 novels and a collection of short stories, the release said. His novel “Wolf’s Mouth” was selected as a Library of Michigan Notable Book for 2017. Some of his earlier works, including “Cold,” “Fire Point,” “The Invisible World,” “The Anarchist,” “The Schoolmaster’s Daughter” and “Quarantine,” have been reissued in paperback and as e-books by Michigan State University Press.

He was educated at Boston College, the University of New Hampshire, and the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. In addition to his instruction at Northern Michigan University, Smolens has taught at Michigan State University and Western Michigan University. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Michigan Author of the Year Award from the Michigan Library Association. He lives in Marquette.

According to a description of Smolens’ book provided by the Michigan State University Press, “Day of Days” looks at the school bombing through the lens of several Bath school children. One survivor, Beatrice Turcott, recalls the spring of 1927 and how this “haunting experience has led her to the conviction that one does not survive the present without reconciling hard truths about the past.”

In the spring 1927, Andrew Kehoe, formerly a resident of Tecumseh, the treasurer of the school board in Bath, spent weeks wiring the public school, as well as his farm, with hundreds of pounds of dynamite. The explosions on May 18 — the day before the school’s graduation — killed and maimed dozens of children, as well as teachers, administrators and village residents, including Kehoe’s wife, Nellie. Kehoe himself died when he ignited his truck, loaded with crates of explosives and scrap metal.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Michigan Notable author to speak Monday at the Adrian District Library