402-471-3434
800-307-2665
Dancing with the Octopus: A Memoir of a Crime
Chosen as 2024 One Book One Nebraska
This memoir of native Nebraskan, Debora Harding, is all about a traumatic childhood event, the aftereffects of which would change her family forever.
Harding expertly weaves the past with the present in a riveting story of survival and family dynamics. Harding’s debut book has been compared to bestsellers
like The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and Educated by Tara Westover.
“With remarkable narrative skill, Harding untangles the lingering effects of family dysfunction and criminal trauma. This is a page-turner with a deep heart
and soul, full of forgiveness but demanding of accountability.” – BookPage, Best Books of 2020: Memoirs
Debora Harding was born and raised in the midwest. At the age of nineteen she dropped out of university to work for Senator Gary Hart’s presidential campaign,
before relocating to Washington DC to run an environmental non-profit. Fed up with politics, she cycled across America where she met her English husband, author
Thomas Harding. She then joined him in the UK and worked at an award-winning video production company that focused on the counter-culture protest movement in
Europe. Later, she co-founded the UK’s first local television station in Oxford. Wanting the children to enjoy the great outdoors, the family moved back to the
USA, and Debora trained as a restorative justice mediator and ran an independent bicycle business. She is now a full-time writer and activist, and splits her
time between the UK and the US.
Libraries across Nebraska will join other literary and cultural
organizations in planning book discussions, activities, and events that will
encourage Nebraskans to read and discuss this book. Support materials to
assist with local reading/discussion activities will be available after
January 1, 2024 at
http://onebook.nebraska.gov. Updates and activity listings will be
posted on the One Book One Nebraska Facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/onebookonenebraska.
2024 will mark the twentieth year of the One Book One Nebraska reading
program, sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book. It encourages
Nebraskans across the state to read and discuss one book, chosen from books
written by Nebraska authors or that have a Nebraska theme or setting. The
Nebraska Center for the Book invites recommendations for One Book One
Nebraska book selection year-round at
http://centerforthebook.nebraska.gov/obon-nomination.asp.
One Book One Nebraska is sponsored by Nebraska Center for the Book,
Humanities Nebraska, and Nebraska Library Commission. The Nebraska Center
for the Book brings together the state’s readers, writers, booksellers,
librarians, publishers, printers, educators, and scholars to build the
community of the book, supporting programs to celebrate and stimulate public
interest in books, reading, and the written word. The Nebraska Center for
the Book is housed at and supported by the Nebraska Library Commission.
As the state library agency, the Nebraska Library Commission is an
advocate for the library and information needs of all Nebraskans. The
mission of the Library Commission is statewide promotion, development, and
coordination of library and information services, “bringing together people
and information.”
###
The most up-to-date news releases from the Nebraska Library Commission
are always available on the Library Commission website,
http://nlc.nebraska.gov/publications/newsreleases.