Library group to sponsor book club

Friends of the Madera County Library will sponsor a community book club called “Madera Reads.”

The first meeting is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 3, in the Galloway Room of the Madera Public Library, 121 N. G St.

That meeting will provide general information about the club and will have free copies of the first book available to the first 10 people who attend.

The book is “Manana Means Heaven,” by Tim Z. Hernandez, an author and poet who resides in Fresno.

“Manana Means Heaven” is based on a story by Jack Kerouac which is contained in his novel, “On the Road.”

It is about “The Mexican Girl,” whom Kerouac meets in a Los Angeles bus station. They have a brief affair, winding up in the Central San Joaquin Valley, where she takes a job as a field hand. Kerouac departs to return to the east, where he is from. They exchange love letters, which make up a part of the novel.

In writing the book, Hernandez traced the Mexican woman, who by then was in her 90s, but remembered Kerouac, who died in Florida in 1969 of injuries suffered in a bar fight.

The book club will read and discuss “Manana Means Heaven,” then will take up the debut novel “Idaho,” by Emily Ruskovich. In this novel, a woman seeks the facts about the killing of her husband’s young daughter by his ex-wife.