Join Rooted Magazine editor Lauren Rhodes for a live discussion of the Book Club selection for March: The Weeds, by Katy Simpson Smith. The Rooted Book Club meets on Zoom at the end of each month to discuss a book from a Mississippi author.
Nothing signals spring in the South quite like the profusion of bright green, flowering plants sprouting up in lawns, lots, and highway medians, seemingly overnight—a tapestry of chickweed, cleavers, henbit, false garlic, wild violets, and crimson clover. Those few weeks of spring weeds, before the evil mowers crank into gear, are my favorite weeks of spring. What a perfect time, then, to read Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds, a celebration of plant life and survival, told through the eyes of two women documenting the flora of the Roman Colosseum—centuries apart. As Katy writes, “women and unwanted plants have an uncomfortable amount in common.”
Named a best book of the year at The New Yorker and a must read at The Boston Globe, Literary Hub, The Millions, and Garden & Gun, the novel borrows its structure from botanist Richard Deakin’s 1855 Flora of Colosseum, a catalog of the 420 plants he found growing in the Roman ruins. The Weeds, too, has 420 entries that form a fully fleshed out narrative arc and a conversation held between two women of two different times…and occasionally, a ghost.
Lucky for us, Katy will be joining us to talk about her beautiful and compulsively readable novel on Thursday, March 21 at 6 p.m. CDT. You can order a copy of The Weeds from our partners at Friendly City Books.