Rough Drafts Book Club
Exploring literature with an emphasis on masculinity, fatherhood, history, and adventure.
First Wednesdays. 7pm discussion at the Library, optional (but encouraged!) 8pm social hour at Tecumseh Tavern.
October 7th’s book is: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers—bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio—changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot.
Orville and Wilbur Wright were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity. When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education and little money never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off, they risked being killed.
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Rough Drafts Book Club
Exploring literature with an emphasis on masculinity, fatherhood, history, and adventure.
First Wednesdays. 7pm discussion at the Library, optional (but encouraged!) 8pm social hour at Tecumseh Tavern.
November 4th’s book is: Mayflower by Nathanial Philbrick
Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War explores the first fifty-five years of the Plymouth colony, detailing how the initial alliance between the Pilgrims and local Native Americans eventually disintegrated. The book describes the challenging 1620 voyage and the early years of mutual survival and fragile cooperation enabled by leaders like Massasoit. It concludes with the tragic devastation of King Philip’s War, a bloody conflict sparked by the next generation that decimated the indigenous population and transformed New England.
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November 2026
TDL Evening Book Club, November 16, 2026 at 6:30 pm
TDL Afternoon Book Club, November 18, 2026 at 3:00 pm
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Set in 1580s and 1590s Warwickshire, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a luminous historical reimagining of the domestic life and marriage of a young Latin tutor—who will become the world’s most famous playwright—and his eccentric, healer wife, Agnes. The narrative weaves two timelines together, charting the passionate beginnings of their unconventional courtship alongside a tense, devastating week in Stratford-upon-Avon where the bubonic plague threatens their young family. Ultimately, the novel serves as a profound, lyrical exploration of maternal and paternal grief, capturing how a sudden loss fractures a family and how that overwhelming sorrow is transmuted into an immortal piece of stage art.
Rough Drafts Book Club
Exploring literature with an emphasis on masculinity, fatherhood, history, and adventure.
First Wednesdays. 7pm discussion at the Library, optional (but encouraged!) 8pm social hour at Tecumseh Tavern.
December 2nd’s book is: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson
In 1948 Montana, twelve-year-old David watches his family dynamic shatter when their young Sioux housekeeper accuses his uncle, a respected local doctor, of assaulting Native American women. David’s father, the town sheriff, is forced into a grueling moral dilemma as he launches an investigation into his own brother. This tense struggle pits family loyalty against legal justice, threatening to expose deep-seated racism and corruption within their small community.
December 2026
TDL Afternoon Book Club, December 16, 2026 at 3:00 pm
TDL Evening Book Club, December 21, 2026 at 6:30 pm
Time of the Child by Niall Williams
Set in 1580s and 1590s Warwickshire, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a luminous historical reimagining of the domestic life and marriage of a young Latin tutor—who will become the world’s most famous playwright—and his eccentric, healer wife, Agnes. The narrative weaves two timelines together, charting the passionate beginnings of their unconventional courtship alongside a tense, devastating week in Stratford-upon-Avon where the bubonic plague threatens their young family. Ultimately, the novel serves as a profound, lyrical exploration of maternal and paternal grief, capturing how a sudden loss fractures a family and how that overwhelming sorrow is transmuted into an immortal piece of stage art.