SATURDAY, JUNE 6
FLAVA CAFE (ST. PAUL)
1:30-3pm
What does my ticket cost go to?
The cost of your ticket goes to our programming, event facilitation, and every ticketed event will include a donation to charity. About 35% of your ticket cost for Model Home will be donated to Queermunityfor this event (Happy Pride Month!). Please be sure that you can make the event when you register as registration is non-refundable. If you’d like to transfer your ticket to someone else, please email Softcoverbookclubmn@gmail.com with the information of who you are transferring your ticket to. Thank you!
Flava Cafe
Flava Cafe is a community oriented coffee shop with an incredible mission. In 2024 they were awarded by the City of St. Paul honoring a women-owned business that are committed to equity and empowerment. We encourage members to grab a coffee or bev from Flava at the event!
Want your book delivered while still supporting indie bookstores? You can order Model Home here - https://bookshop.org/shop/softcoverbookclub.*
About the author
Rivers Solomon is an American author of speculative and literary fiction. In 2018, they received the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award in Fiction for their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and in 2020 their second novel, The Deep, won the Lambda Literary Award. We are a fan of getting to know authors through interview and their own words, we saw there was an episode where Rivers Solomon talks about Model Home on the podcast “Gays Reading” for anyone interested. There may be spoilers so maybe something to listen to after reading the novel.
Synopsis
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things―the strange and the unexplainable―began to happen in their house.
As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?
Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.
*This is an affiliate link for Soft Cover Book Club. We earn a small commission from each sale and a portion of the revenue also goes to the profit pool that is paid out to all indie booksellers on the platform bi-annually.
Note, there may be some trigger warnings for novels we read at Soft Cover and we encourage readers to only join events on books with themes they are comfortable discussing.
SUNDAY, MAY 17
SWEDE HOLLOW CAFE (in Saint Paul)
8:00-9:30AM
~Instead of a low-cost ticket, we ask that you donate to one of the mutual aid organizations (link here). No minimum donation. We just ask that you show a receipt at the book club or email a screenshot to softcoverbookclubmn@gmail.com!~
This event is in partnership with Swede Hollow Cafe and will be co-facilitated by Hannah (@_midwesterncryptid_), a current practicing local witch with insights into what this book gets right and what it doesn’t! Hannah will also be leading a group tarot reading toward the end of the event!
The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
Witches, but make it suffrage, sisterhood, and rage.
In a world where magic has been reduced to children’s rhymes, three estranged sisters come back together and start something dangerous: a witch’s movement. What follows is part historical fiction, part fantasy, and all about women refusing to stay small.
This book is historical fiction centering three estranged sisters who reunite in the late 1800’s in New Salem to use long forgotten witchcraft to aid the suffragette movement, blending magic, folklore, and feminist themes. The book explores sisterhood, power, and resistance, re-imagining history through the lens of women's fight for equality. It's a standalone novel praised for its lyrical prose, rich world-building, and relevant social commentary.
Swede Hollow Cafe has been a neighborhood staple on Dayton’s Bluff on Saint Paul’s east side since 1997. It’s historic and very much gives “practical magic.” Go grab a coffee and curl up with The Once and Future Witches in their sun room upstairs or outside patio this Spring!
We encourage members to grab a treat during the book club! Coffee will be provided (but if you want one of their specialty lattes - we understand).
See you there!
WEDNESDAY APRIL 29TH FROM 5:30-7PM
SUBTEXT BOOKS IN ST. PAUL
REGISTER NOW!
This book club event is in partnership with SubText Books. Readers are highly encouraged to purchase their copy from SubText if able to support our favorite indie bookstores.
A book about loving someone you can’t reach anymore.
When a deep-sea mission goes wrong, a woman returns home changed—and her wife is left trying to understand what that means for their marriage. This isn’t really a horror novel. It’s about distance, caregiving, resentment, and the quiet ways relationships dissolve.
It’s restrained, unsettling, and emotionally precise. A book for readers who sit with discomfort instead of needing answers.
Come for the intimacy.
Stay for the hard conversations it makes unavoidable.
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