Read Between the Ravines
Lake Bluff Public Library and Lake Forest Library are proud to present our seventh annual Read Between the Ravines. This Two Communities, One Nonfiction Book program brings together the Lake Bluff and Lake Forest communities with the purpose of enhancing nonfiction literacy and inspiring discussion around real-world issues. Our 2025 selection is Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood by Dawn Turner.
Author Event: An Evening with Dawn Turner
Recording available through 5/16/25.
2025 Featured Book
About the Book
Journalist Dawn Turner revisits her own past, and tells the story of her sister, who died at 24 from chronic alcoholism, and her childhood best friend, who served 20 years in prison for murder.
Turner's book also explores about how the neighborhood the three girls grew up in affected the course of their lives. They grew up in Bronzeville, the Chicago neighborhood which Turner describes as the narrow strip of land where the city forced the influx of new Black residents to live during the Great Migration. She says it was the place officials abandoned and neglected, allowing burned-out stores to stand, alleys to fill with mud and mountains of trash to accumulate. For years, it had been the place where the Black elite - politicians, lawyers, doctors and professors - lived along with factory workers, domestic workers, street vendors, sex workers and drug dealers.
Lake Forest Bookstore is offering a 10% discount to customers who purchase the book and mention the 'Read Between the Ravines' program series.
About the Author
Dawn Turner is an award-winning journalist and novelist. A former columnist and reporter for the Chicago Tribune, Turner spent a decade and a half writing about race, politics, and people whose stories are often dismissed and ignored. Turner, who served as a 2017 and 2018 juror for the Pulitzer Prize in commentary, has written commentary for The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, CBS Sunday Morning News show, NPR’s Morning Edition show, the Chicago Tonight show, and elsewhere. She has covered national presidential conventions, as well as Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election and inauguration. Turner has been a regular commentator for several national and international news programs, and has reported from around the world in countries such as Australia, China, France, and Ghana. She spent the 2014–2015 school year as a Nieman Journalism fellow at Harvard University. In 2018, she served as a fellow and journalist-in-residence at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Turner is the author of two novels, Only Twice I’ve Wished for Heaven and An Eighth of August. In 2018, she established the Dawn M. Turner and Kim D. Turner Endowed Scholarship in Media at her alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
About the Interviewer
Toya Wolfe earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Her debut novel, Last Summer on State Street is the recipient of The Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Open Book Award, winner of the Friends of American Writers Adult Literature Award for Fiction, winner of the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award in Traditional Fiction and selected by four-time NBA Champion Stephen Curry for his August 2022 “Underrated” Book Club. Visit on social media at @toyawolves.
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Last Summer on State Street: A Novel by Toya Wolfe
About the Book
In the summer of 1999, Felicia “Fe Fe” Stevens and her friends navigate childhood in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes as their community crumbles around them. When a new friend, Tonya, shifts their group’s fragile dynamics, the lives of all four girls are forever altered. Years later, Fe Fe reflects on that fateful summer, grappling with loss, love, and the bonds that shaped her. Last Summer on State Street is a poignant debut about friendship, resilience, and reclaiming one’s past amidst systemic injustice.
Read Between the Ravines Programs
Registration will be begin March 2025