2026 Fall Read

In 1902, my great-great-grandfather H.B. Kliewer gained his U.S. citizenship. He had been living in Hillsboro, Kansas, ostensibly orphaned when his father died shortly after the family emigrated from Russia in the late 1880s. Until a few days ago, I had only a vague outline of this story. I knew my family had emigrated from Russia as part of the larger Mennonite migration discussed in David Laskin’s The Children’s Blizzard, but I was unfamiliar with the texture of this family’s settler story.

I am Martin Fulmer from Goodwell, OK, here for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club’s 2026 Fall Read. Growing up in the Carolinas, I never thought of blizzards as part of my weather vocabulary. Hurricanes, yes. But blizzards belonged somewhere else. Melanie Benjamin’s The Children’s Blizzard reminded me that weather has a way of making such distinctions meaningless.

For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I'm Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas. Today we're talking about the book The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin. This is about the 1888 blizzard. It affected three states, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

In The Children’s Blizzard, David Laskin seeks to unpack the complex history of Anabaptist emigration to the Great Plains and the eventual tragedy of the 1888 blizzard, which took the lives of hundreds of people, many of them children. There are many points where Laskin might impart some sense of cosmic morality to these events, such as when he repeatedly notes that the land that lured these settlers from their Mennonite communities in Europe had been violently seized from the Indigenous peoples who had inhabited it for millennia by the U.S. military and railroad companies.

I'm Glenda Shepard of Yucca Corners farm in rural Stanton County KS. On a 100 plus degree day in August, I have for you my Radio Readers BookByte of The Children's Blizzard by David Laskin.

Hi, this Alan Erwin from Amarillo. I just finished reading The Children's Blizzard, by David Laskin. As I write this, Amarillo's extended weather forecast calls for multiple days over 100 degrees.

It takes a lot for us to embrace an outsider writing our stories. I sat with Duane West, the prosecutor of the murders of the Clutter family, in his living room for three hours in 2017, and he had quite a bit to say about his distaste for Truman Capote. While I don’t have the same personal animus that our mournfully departed Mr. West had for In Cold Blood, I’ll admit it’s tough for a New Yorker to “get it,” and the readers of this book club often just know when someone has it right.

On January 12, 1888, what began as an ordinary winter morning across the Great Plains became one of the deadliest weather disasters in American history. A sudden Arctic front swept across the prairie with little warning, trapping children on their way home from one-room schools, isolating families, and forever changing the communities that survived it.

Thank you for joining us at the High Plains Public Radio Station. My name is Jessica Sadler. I can usually be found in a secondary science classroom, but I am currently a Teacher Professional Development Fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. I am here with the other book leaders to discuss The Wonderful Wizard of OZ by L. Frank Baum.

Hello, Radio Readers! This is Marit Ehmke from western Lane County with a Radio Readers BookByte for High Plains Public Radio’s Fall Read on Wind and Weather. When I think about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, I think first about Kansas weather.