Mansfield Reads! features Longmire book

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

For Mansfield Read’s 20th anniversary, the Friends of the Mansfield Public Library have rounded up a popular author whose best-known work became a long-running television series.

New York Times best-selling author Craig Johnson, writer of 19 mystery books about Sheriff Walt Longmire, will be the featured author of Mansfield Reads! One City, One Book.

The Friends of the Library will kick off events at 6 p.m. Sept. 7 at Market Street, 3145 E. Broad St., with food, raffle and silent auction. The kick-off party is free, as is the Evening with the Author, set for Oct. 19 at the Mansfield Public Library, 104 S. Wisteria St., where fans can meet the author and get autographs.

“I’ve been trying to get him for years,” said Carol Ann Grantham, secretary and past president of the Friends of the Mansfield Public Library. “I saw him in Fort Worth years ago. He’s really a good speaker. He’s funny, he’s not anything like you might expect. Longmire is not an autobiographical person. He lives in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25. He has a tiny ranch.”

Although the Longmire series contains almost two dozen novels based in Wyoming, Mansfield Reads! will focus on just one, “Daughter of the Morning Star,” a story involving death threats to a Cheyenne teen.

“This particular book focuses on how many Native women go missing,” Grantham said. “He got the idea for this one when he was doing a library event on the Crow reservation and saw a missing poster that was faded.

“Chances of Native woman being murdered are 10 times the national average,” she said. “Four out of five Native women have experienced societal violence. Murder is the third-leading cause of death for Indigenous women.”

In “Daughter of the Morning Star,” Johnson looks at the dangers Native women face.

“The young woman is a really good basketball player and she starts receiving death threats,” Grantham said. “Her older sister disappeared a year previously. She’s really good and they’re headed for the state championship and something happens to the coach.”

The tribal police call in Sheriff Longmire and his team to help investigate.

The Longmire series was produced as a television show, starring Robert Taylor and Lou Diamond Phillips, that aired from 2012-2017 on A&E and Netflix.

The “Daughter of the Morning Star” can be purchased at the Mansfield Public Library for $15.

The Friends of the Mansfield Public Library have hosted Mansfield Reads! for two decades, encouraging the community to read the same book and to discuss it.

“It’s to promote literacy and bring the community together,” Grantham said. “We encourage everyone to read the same book at the same time. It’s kind of like a gigantic annual book club. It’s based on a nationwide program called One City, One Book.”

Grantham has created a collector’s item to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mansfield Reads!

“I have made a quilt with all of the book covers for the 20th anniversary with all of the book covers,” she said. “We will have a silent auction and it will be given out at the Evening with the Author. It will be on display at the library.”

‍