One Book | One Minnesota 2025
Minnesota, let’s read together!
August 4 – September 28, 2024
Join Lake Agassiz Regional Library and libraries across the state to participate in the fourteenth chapter of One Book | One Minnesota, a statewide book club that invites Minnesotans of all ages to read a common title and come together virtually to enjoy, reflect, and discuss. This year’s title for the program is “Evidence of V: a Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions” by Sheila O’Conner.
Virtual Author Conversation
Conversation with Sheila O’Connor and Mubanga Kalimamukwento
Wednesday, September 17 | 7:00 p.m.
Register for free here.
Read digitally for free with Ebooks of Minnesota here!
About the Book
In a blend of fact and fiction, including family secrets, documents from the era, and a thin, fragmentary
case file unsealed by the court, Sheila O’Connor tells the riveting story of V, a talented fifteen-year-old
singer in 1930s Minneapolis who aspires to be a star. Drawing on the little-known American practice of
incarcerating adolescent girls for “immorality” in the first half of the twentieth century, O’Connor
follows young V from her early work as a nightclub entertainer to her subsequent six-year state school
sentence for an unplanned pregnancy. As V struggles to survive within a system only nominally
committed to rescue and reform, she endures injustices that will change the course of her life and the
lives of her descendants
About the Author
Sheila O’Connor is the award-winning author of six novels. Her work has been widely anthologized and
published in many magazines and journals. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has
been awarded two Bush Fellowships, Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, and a McKnight
Fellowship. She has been a residency fellow at Yaddo, The Studios of Key West, Anderson Center for
Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Center, and elsewhere. She is a professor of Creative Writing at
Hamline University.
One Book | One Minnesota is presented by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library, as the Minnesota Center for the Book, in partnership with State Library Services and sponsored by Blaze Credit Union. Program partners also include Council of Regional Public Library System Administrators; Mackin VIA; Minitex; the Minnesota Department of Education; Macmillan Publishers; and Recorded Books. This program is made possible in part through an appropriation from the Minnesota State Legislature to The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library as the Minnesota Center for the Book. See more details and a list of previous titles here.