Robert Olmstead Reading and Book Signing Tuesday 3 April @ 7pm

Join us for a special reading with Robert Olmstead on the day his new novel, The Coldest Night, is released.   A book signing and wine reception will follow the reading.

Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly consumes him. But when young Mercy’s disapproving father threatens Henry’s life, Henry runs as far as he can—to the other side of the world.

The time is 1950, and the Korean War hangs in the balance. Descended from a long line of soldiers, Henry enlists in the marines and arrives in Korea on the eve of the brutal seventeen-day battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the turning point of the war—completely unprepared for the forbidding Korean landscape and the unimaginable circumstances of a war well beyond the scope of anything his ancestors ever faced. But the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far.

Robert Olmstead’s riveting new novel is not only a passionate story of love and war, it is a timeless story of soldiers coming home to a country with little regard for, and even less knowledge of, what they’ve confronted. Through his hero, Olmstead reveals an unspoken truth about combat: that for many men, the experience of war is the most enlivening, electric, and extraordinary experience of their lives.



Robert Olmstead is the author of seven previous books. Coal Black Horse was the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the Ohioana Award, and was a #1 Book Sense pick and a Border’s Discover pick. Far Bright Star was the winner of the Western Writers of America Spur Award. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an NEA grant, and is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Songs Worth Singing, A Night With Steve Stockman

Wednesday, March 28th @ 8:00 PM

A special after-hours event- Come explore the power of folk music to address the big questions of life, the human condition, and faith. Rev. Steve Stockman, author of Walk On: The Spiritual Journey of U2 will discuss various folk artist like Over the Rhine, Mumford and Sons, and Chrisy Moore. Moore s...ings in his song North and South of the River, "some songs are not worth singing". This evening will examine songs that do provide thoughtful reflection on ourselves and the world around us.

Songs performed LIVE by "For Crying Out Loud". Refreshments will be served.

Robert Flanagan Reading Monday 3/26 @ 7pm

Please join us on Monday, March 26 at 7 p.m. as Delaware author Bob Flanagan reads from his new short story collection, Fight Night.

Flanagan is the author of the acclaimed Marine Corps novel Maggot and the short story collections Naked to Naked Goes and Loving Power. Born in Toledo, he studied at the University of Chicago and served as Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing program at Ohio Wesleyan University, retiring in 2010. He lives in Delaware with his wife, Katy, and works out in a basement gym featuring a heavy bag, a peanut bag (“speed bag”) and a boom-box.

Nan Byrne, a writer and producer, has high praise for Fight Night. “Like a perfect left hook hitting America’s mid-section, Flanagan’s new collection of stories packs a powerful wallop,” she said. “Inside this book you will find spit and towel tales of the bruised and battered, jammed-fingered, broken-down and bloody-nosed, but still-resilient souls who come out swinging in that “cap down and collar up” corner of the universe where glory dreams collide with the hard-knock life. From the salty reminisces of a worn-out prize fighter to the liquid dreams of a youngster steeling for his first schoolyard fight, Flanagan’s brutally-honest prose floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee sent straight to the heart.”

Fight Night was recently published by XOXOX, located in Gambier, Ohio.

Thursday 3/22 @ 7pm Book Talk & Signing Wisdom Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Please join us for a book talk and discussion with biblical scholar and MTSO Faculty member John Kampen.

He will speak on the Dead Sea Scrolls and his recent book Wisdom Literature.

Wisdom Literature is the first comprehensive commentary on the wisdom texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Kampen relates the body of wisdom literature discovered at Qumranto the larger wisdom tradition, to apocalyptic literature, to the Hebrew Scriptures, and to the New Testament, and he shows how these texts fit into and enhance our understanding of the complex social and intellectual history of Second Temple Judaism.

John Kampen is the Dunn Professor of Biblical Interpretation at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. A recognized scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, he is the author of The Hasideans and the Origins of Pharisaism: A Study of 1 and 2 Maccabees and coeditor of a number of research volumes, the best known of which is (with Moshe Bernstein) Reading 4QMMT: New Perspectives on Qumran Law and History. He also is the author of numerous research articles and has served as co-chair of the Qumran Studies section of the Society of Biblical Literature.

For reviews for his book check out:    Eerdmans John Kampen