Books typically transport readers figuratively to a different place and time, where they get to know — again, figuratively — characters both real and imagined. But for members of a Hyde Park book discussion group, literature has fostered actual human connection. Their story starts in 2022, w hen the world was navigating a new COVID-19 variant that had infected far more people than any that had come before. In Blaine, Minn., about 18 miles north of Minneapolis, Fran Megarry was looking for a book group that met remotely. Her hometown library had struggled to get virtual groups going, she said, so she searched online and found one hosted by Lanpher Memorial Library in Hyde Park. At first, she thought that meant the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. She soon realized it was Hyde Park, Vermont, a Lamoille County town of about 3,000 residents. Megarry, now 84, had never been to Vermont. A list of books the group had read was posted on the library’s website. “I really have enjoyed many of those books,” Megarry remembered thinking, so she emailed library director Amy Olsen to ask if she could join. Olsen was taken aback at first. The library trustee who started the group in 2012, Fran Aronovici, had just died. Here, “out of the blue,” Olsen said, was another Fran. Megarry attended her first meeting that November. “I don’t remember the book, but I do remember the people and how kind they were,” she said. Discussion flowed, and everyone participated. Soon, her children knew not to call on the third Tuesday of the month between 6:30 and 8 p.m. Megarry has missed only a few meetings. Once pandemic restrictions lifted, she attended an in-person meeting at her hometown library, she said, “but I was so embedded with the Hyde Park group that I didn’t want to give that up.” The Hyde Park meetings typically draw about a dozen participants. The gatherings are now held in person, but Olsen said she decided to continue the remote option because it’s more inclusive. Local members use it in the winter or when they’re traveling, but Megarry is the only participant who doesn’t live in Vermont. “She fit right in, instantly,” longtime member Lucia Carlucci said. Each month, when members gather in a circle in front of the fireplace in the fiction section, Megarry is there, too, appearing on the screen of a laptop set on a podium. She brings warmth and kindness, Carlucci said. The library’s videoconferencing camera allows Megarry to see the room as well as a close-up of whomever is speaking. Lanpher Memorial Library Credit: courtesy In September 2023, when Carlucci led the discussion about The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate, she wanted to bring the group Cocoa Oatmeal Raisin Pooperoos, cookies mentioned in the book. She didn’t want Megarry to feel left out, so she baked two batches and mailed a box to Minnesota in advance. She did the same when she made scones for the discussion of Marie Benedict’s The Queens of Crime, which is set in London. The group has introduced Megarry to books she likely wouldn’t have discovered otherwise, including Vermont Humanities’ annual Vermont Reads selections, such as Gather by Norwich author Kenneth M. Cadow. “I always look forward to that,” Megarry said. And she always learns something, she continued. At one meeting, a member mentioned mud season, she said: “And then someone else talked about, I think she said it was ‘twig season,’ and I said, ‘I’m not familiar with those.’ … It was very fun.” As this year’s February meeting was wrapping up, the Vermonters asked Megarry about the turmoil in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where she now lives. Some 3,000 federal immigration agents had arrived in Minnesota, and in January, agents fatally shot U.S. citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were everywhere, Megarry told the book group. They sat in the parking lot of the Mexican supermarket where she shopped. She protested ICE activity, but it was difficult to know how to help those who were targeted. She fit right in, instantly.Lucia Carlucci “When we said good night to her,” Carlucci said, “a couple of us said to Amy, ‘Can’t we put a box together of stuff and send it to her, and she can share with people in her neighborhood?’ I said, ‘I’ll bake.’ … And somebody else said, ‘I’ll get maple syrup.’ And somebody else said, ‘I’ll get local honey.’” Book group member Gina Jenkins knit red hats, symbols of resistance inspired by those that Norwegians began wearing in 1941 to protest Nazi occupation. Olsen contributed Lanpher library ornaments; pencils and book bags emblazoned with intellectual freedom messages; and a sticker that said, “I tried to form a gang but it turned it into a book club.” The group also sent $250 in cash, which Megarry used to buy milk, diapers, meat, cheese and vegetables for 15 people who were afraid to leave their apartments. In a March 5 email she wrote thanking the group, Megarry concluded, “How lucky was I to meet you all and get to know you over the years via Zoom. I really must visit.” Two months later, on the third Tuesday in May, she walked into the library for the first time. Fran Megarry (rear, wearing blue) and the Lanpher Memorial Library book discussion group Credit: courtesy of Heather Traeger “It was unbelievable,” she said. She had flown to Boston with her daughter and son-in-law, Heather and Mark Traeger, the day before and driven to Hyde Park. Book group member Helen Whitney, who was out town, had insisted they stay in her house, just around the corner from the library. Spring flowers bloomed in Whitney’s enormous garden, Heather said: “The whole place looked like a Hallmark movie.” Carlucci stocked the kitchen, and Whitney left them copious notes about how things worked and told them not to be alarmed if people walked their dogs through the yard. Three book group members took Megarry and her children out to dinner, and the next night she finally met the rest of the group face-to-face. They gathered an hour early for pizza. “It was almost giddy,” Olsen said. “People were just giggling and laughing and just telling stories and having a great time together.” Megarry, a nonfiction fan, led the discussion on the book she had selected: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. She and her children left for Boston the next morning. When the June meeting rolled around, a box of cookies and brownies as big as bricks arrived at the library. Megarry had ordered the treats from Two Sons Bakehouse in Hyde Park as a thank-you. That day happened to be her birthday. She didn’t realize that anyone in the group knew that, but when the meeting opened, the other members sang to her. Then they got down to business and discussed the book Twice by Mitch Albom, with Megarry back in her usual spot: on a laptop screen on the podium. “So close,” Carlucci said, “but yet so far.” Learn more at lanpherlibrary.org/book-discussion. The post A Minnesota Reader Forges a Bond With a Hyde Park Book Group appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less