For our back-to-school read, we will study The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams on October 9 at 2:30 at St. Matthew’s.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. So she leaves the sheltered world of the university and ventures out to meet the people whose words will fill her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, this highly original story reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. A delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

Save the date: On November 6 we will discuss Search: a memoir with recipes by Dana Louise Potowski by Michele Huneven.