Ames Free Library Book Club - The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

Find your next great read and some lively conversation with the Ames Free Library Book Club! Copies of each selection are available at the Circulation Desk approximately one month before the meeting.

The Ames Free Library Book Club has two meeting options every month. We welcome all new members! Subscribe to the "AFL Book Club" e-newsletter to receive book club reminders and updates.

If you're unable to attend this meeting in person, we're happy to offer a hybrid meeting option! Contact the library at info@amesfreelibrary.org or 508-238-2000, ext. 3 and we will provide a Zoom link. Please note that we require at least 24 hours notice.

This month's selection is The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

"It's been a minute--or five years--since Jordan Vargas last saw his college friends, and twenty-eight years since their graduation from Berkeley when their adult lives officially began. Now Jordan, Jordy, Naomi, Craig, and Marielle find themselves at the brink of a new decade, with all the responsibilities of adulthood, yet no closer to having their lives figured out. Though not for a lack of trying. Over the years they've reunited in Big Sur to honor a decades-old pact to throw each other living "funerals," celebrations to remind themselves that life is worth living--that their lives mean something, to one another if not to themselves.

But this reunion is different. They're not gathered as they were to bolster Marielle as her marriage crumbled, to lift Naomi after her parents died, or to intervene when Craig pleaded guilty to art fraud. This time, Jordan is sitting on a secret that will upend their pact.

A deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley's signature humor and heart, The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living."