This week is my library system’s Staff Conference. Employees were encouraged to bring in a book that had somehow changed their lives and pose by a mural upon which book testimonials were written. I selected Helen Hooven Santmyer’s “…And Ladies of the Club”, which I read in 2010. I am posing with the original hardcover edition from 1982 by Ohio State University Press. I can’t really say that this novel changed my life, other than it gave me six weeks of reading pleasure and inspired me to visit the author’s hometown of Xenia, Ohio. I also haven’t stopped raving about it for the past six years, and even persuaded two friends to sit down and read this chunker (which they did). Over the six weeks it took me to finish this novel I got to know the personal lives of many generations of strong literate women. If you want a story about generations of feminists from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1930’s, immerse yourself among the characters of the Waynesboro Woman’s Club.