The Kramer Girls, the fifth novel of Cedar Falls writer Ruth Suckow, will be discussed and celebrated Saturday, June 12 at 1 p.m. at the Cedar Falls Public Library in Cedar Falls, Iowa.  The public is invited to this free event to be led by Barbara Lounsberry, current President of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, and George Day.

Suckow's novel The Kramer Girls (1929) is the story of three sisters: the two older sisters, Georgie and Annie, have raised Rose, the baby, since their mother's illness.  However, the story explores more than just a simple tale of growing up in small town Iowa.  The Iowa Avenue Literary Walk describes the book this way: "The Kramer Girls explores the feminine struggle for self-realization."

http://www.icgov.org/default/?id=1668

Suckow grew up in Iowa. Her father, Congregational minister William Suckow, married Opal Swindle of Cedar Falls in 1922, after Ruth's mother died.  Ruth was 30 at the time and lived with the couple in Cedar Falls during the winter of 1922-1923. 

In 1929, Ruth married Ferner Nuhn of Cedar Falls.   They lived in Cedar Falls in 1931 and 1932, writing books and articles and giving guest lectures at the University of Northern Iowa (then Iowa State Teachers College).  They lived in Cedar Falls again from 1935 to 1938.  Ruth died in 1960 and her grave rests next to her father’s in Cedar Falls’ Greenwood Cemetery.

In the 1920s, H. L. Mencken called Suckow one of the nation's most promising writers, says Lounsberry: “Suckow is Iowa’s Willa Cather.  Her fiction explores with moving realism and rich detail the life in Midwestern communities.”

For more information, or to join the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association, contact Lounsberry at 319-268-0502.

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