Evidence of V is 14th chapter of One Book | One Minnesota

The One Book | One Minnesota program, which began in the Spring of 2020, is happy to announce the 14th chapter of this statewide book club with Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fiction, by Sheila O'Connor.  This title is available from August 4th to September 28th via Ebooks Minnesota. One Book | One Minnesota is a statewide book club that invites Minnesotans of all ages to read a common title and come together virtually to enjoy, reflect, and discuss.

In a blend of fact and fiction, including family secrets, documents from the era, and a thin, fragmentary case file unsealed by the court, Sheila O'Connor tells the riveting story of V, a talented fifteen-year-old singer in 1930s Minneapolis who aspires to be a star.  Drawing on the little-known American practice of incarcerating adolescent girls for "immorality" in the first half of the 20th century, O'Connor follows young V from her early work as a nightclub entertainer to her subsequent six-year state school sentence for an unplanned pregnancy.  As V struggles to survive within a system only nominally committed to rescue and reform, she endures injustices that will change the course of her life and the lives of her descendants.

Sheila O'Connor is an award-winning author of six novels.  Her work has been widely anthologized and published in many magazines and journals.  She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been awarded two Bush Fellowships, Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, and a McKnight Fellowship.  She has been a residency fellow at Yaddo, The Studios of Key West, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Tyrone Guthrie Center, and elsewhere.  She is a professor of Creative Writing at Hamline University.