UPDATE: Daniel Boone Regional Library announces One Read selection

Andrea Barrett, author of "The Air We Breathe," which was chosen as the 2009 One Read book as part of a program to encourage literary discussion within the Boone County community.   ¦  Courtesy Daniel Boone Regional Library

COLUMBIA – The Daniel Boone Regional Library on Tuesday announced its “One Read” book selection for 2009 to be “The Air We Breathe,” a work of fiction by Andrea Barrett.

“The Air We Breathe” is a historic novel about the U.S. just prior to its entrance into World War I. The book takes place in 1916 at the Tamarack Lake Sanitarium for tuberculosis patients in the Adirondack mountain region of upstate New York and deals with the lives of the patients within the sanitarium.

This is the eighth year that the library has chosen a One Read book. The program strives to get adults in the community to read one book and participate in discussion groups. One Read has grown in popularity over the years. In 2002 the first One Read book only had 310 checkouts, but last year's book, “The Whistling Season” by Ivan Doig, was checked out by more than 3,000 people, said Doyne McKenzie, collection development manager for the Daniel Boone Regional Library.

The library has purchased 500 copies of “The Air We Breathe” to be distributed throughout the library system, which includes branches in Columbia, Ashland, Fulton and the bookmobile, McKenzie said.

Barrett is scheduled to speak in Columbia on Sept. 17.

Barrett is a creative writing professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Servants of the Map” and “The Voyage of the Narwhal." She also won a National Book Award in 1996 for "Ship Fever."