Announcing the 2024 Sioux City Reads Title: Take What You Need by Idra Novey
The Sioux City Reads program, a community-based reading initiative where a book chosen by Sioux Cityans becomes the basis for a series of programs, discussions, and events; returns with a new title for 2024: Take What You Need by Idra Novey.
Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who’s sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah’s urban life with her young family, she reveals how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. When Jean dies, Leah must return to sort through what’s been left behind. What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who played an unknown role in Jean’s last years and in her art.
