Explore life, works of Iowan writer Ruth Suckow at Cedar Falls library event, exhibit (2024)

CEDAR FALLS — Iowa author Ruth Suckow loved her tiny Earlville cottage. She kept bees and drove her truck into town to sell honey. The money she earned paid for her winters spent writing in New York City.

But Suckow was an Iowan. She wrote about what she knew – life on the farms and in small towns dotting Iowa’s Midwestern landscape. She wrote about the land and ordinary people who worked and lived on it, their quiet anguish and their loves and losses.

“She’s an acquired taste. Suckow was known for her profound and sometimes painful Midwestern realism. No writer has written so extensively and so thoroughly about Iowa life,” said author Barbara Lounsberry, University of Northern Iowa professor emerita and president of the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association.

“Iowa Writer Ruth Suckow: The Cedar Falls Connection” will be presented at 6 p.m. Monday at the Cedar Falls Public Library. The free public program will highlight the traveling exhibit on Suckow’s life and work on display at the library now through Aug. 4. Desserts will be available.

The program will feature images and discussion of Suckow’s years in Cedar Falls in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s. A short Reader’s Theatre performance of Suckow’s short story, “A Rural Community” will follow, featuring Michael Dargan, author Cherie Dargan and Lounsberry.

Ruth Suckow Memorial Association members and authors Kenneth Lyftogt, Julie Husband and Jim O’Loughlin will discuss what drew them to Suckow and her work.

Husband and O’Loughlin, University of Northern Iowa English professors, wrote a new critical introduction to the recently released centenary edition of Suckow’s poignant “Country People.” The book was first published in 1924. Copies of the centennial novel will be available to purchase.

O’Loughlin described Suckow “as such an observant writer” who took “great pains to sketch out a view of real life as she saw it. She was not into prettying things up or throwing in extra drama. She was often compared to Willa Cather, who added drama and intrigue to her stories, and Suckow hated that. She was a truthful writer,” he said in an earlier Courier interview.

Suckow was a best-selling author, beginning in the 1920s, who published nine novels, in addition to “Country People,” three volumes of short fiction, 43 short stories and two anthologies. Her novels were often Literary Guild selections.

“She captured Iowa life as it was, and she didn’t beautify it. But as you go deeper and deeper into her writings, you feel the sympathy and empathy she had for Iowa’s people,” Lounsberry explained.

Despite success, Suckow became Iowa’s most neglected author, Lounsberry said. “Maybe her name is too hard to pronounce – ‘Soo co,’ but I’m hoping that this exhibit will change that as people learn more about her life and work.”

Roy Behrens, UNI professor emeritus and author, designed the exhibition.

Suckow “was the most famous Iowa writer you never heard of,” Cherie Dargan used to tell her literature students. Dargan, who is preparing to publish the third book in her “Grandmother’s Treasures” series, believes “Suckow simply is in a class of her own as a strong woman writer who captures the people, scenery and seasons of the Midwest in her short stories and novels.”

The Dargans have collaborated with Lounsberry on Suckow-related projects, including a program for the Iowa Library Association and creating a YouTube channel for the Ruth Suckow Memorial Association. RSMA was established 56 years ago with about 70 national and international members.

Suckow was born in 1892 in Hawarden, the daughter of a Congregational minister. Throughout her life, she lived in 12 Iowa communities, including Cedar Falls. She married Ferner Nuhn, a Cedar Falls artist, in 1929. She died in 1960. Her gravesite is in Greenwood Cemetery in Cedar Falls.

Copies of Suckow’s short stories and several novels are available to download at Iowa Heritage Digital Collections, www.iowaheritage.org. For additional information about Suckow, visit www.ruthsuckow.org.