Good morning, book lovers and friends of PBS Kansas.

This is Inside the Cove and I am your host, Ted Ayres.

As always, it is such a pleasure and privilege to share these few moments of your evening in specific reference to this privilege.

Marcia and I attended the recent Brit Club High Tea event.

I can only say that I was honored, thrilled, and pleased by the number of you who sought me out to comment on your appreciation and enjoyment of our show.

This positive response and reinforcement is merely icing on the cake for me, as I take great pride and joy in finding books worthy of discussion and then writing a script that seeks to share, inform, enthuse, and motivate.

Tonight's book is one that I really enjoyed and I think you will as well.

It was a little free public library find, and I consider it a real treasure.

The book is The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder, and what a great name for an author.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

I really don' know what to talk about first.

Let's start with this copy of the book, a trade paperback edition copyrighted in 2006 and published by Harper Perennial.

This copy has a foreword by John Updike.

The book itself, an afterword by Tappan Wilder, Thornton's nephew and his literary executor for over 25 years.

Readings by and about Wilder, an “In His Hands” showing page of Wilder's handwritten notes.

This edition has so much to offer, and certainly worth a searc at your favorite, use bookstore or your own little free public library.

Thornton Niven Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1897.

He died on December 7th of 1975.

Wilder was an interesting, talented, and driven man.

He was a playwright and novelist who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.

In 1962 and 1963, Wilder lived for 20 months in the small town of Douglas, Arizona, apart from family and friends.

Douglas was a U.S. Mexico border town wit a population of 12,820 in 1960, and it was in its golden age in history as a Phelps Dodge Company company town and home of one of the world's great copper smelters.

It was here that Wilder started the Eighth Day, his longest novel and mining certainly play a big part of the book's story.

The Eighth Da was originally published in late March of 1967, three week before Wilder's 70th birthday.

It won the 1968 National Book Award.

This book is chronologically diverse, as it covers 25 years in time.

Although there are mentions o World War One and World War Two.

The book is geographically diverse, with settings in the mining area of southern Illinois, Chile, and other locations in South America, Chicago, Hoboken, New Jersey and Saint Kitts in the Caribbean, with many other locations mentioned.

The Eighth Day is about people, mothers and fathers, families, human interactions, and it's an old fashioned murder mystery, complete with a jury trial and a dramatic escape from imprisonment.

As one reviewer wrote in 2009, “It attacked the big questions embedded in the story of small town America.

The Eighth Day was a great read and I feel very fortunate to have found it.

If you were previously awar of Wilder, I congratulate you.

If we have brought someone new to your eyes and bookshelf... Hallelujah!

That would make me very happy.

Good night and see you next time.

And keep a book in your hands.