Join Dr. Alan Berolzheimer, Vermont Humanities scholar, as he leads a community book discussion of the Vermont Reads book Charity & Sylvia by Tillie Walden. Limited copies of the book are available at the Athenaeum circulation desk to read before the discussion.
Weybridge, Vermont in February 1807 is small, cold, lonely, and beautiful. As an unwed woman with few prospects, Sylvia Drake resides with and cares for her sister’s rambunctious family. But today the house is abuzz awaiting a guest—Charity Bryant. So opens Charity &Sylvia by Tillie Walden, the award-winning, Vermont-based cartoonist and author of Spinning and On a Sunbeam. Created by Walden from archival materials at the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History in Middlebury, and other primary and secondary sources, Charity & Sylvia is a groundbreaking biography that is also the story of 19th century America.
For 44 years Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake lived together as life partners in small town Vermont. And in Walden’s graphic novel, America grows alongside these women. We see the arrival of railroads, the terms of 14 Presidents, riots, rebellion, and plagues.
Vermont Humanities Scholar Alan Berolzheimer has directed the book publishing program of the Vermont Historical Society since 1998. He is also the project historian and assistant director of The Flow of History, a Teaching American History program providing professional development activities to Vermont teachers. Alan received a Ph.D. in 20th-century U.S. History from the University of Virginia in 1996. He lives in Norwich. Vermont Reads events are sponsored by Vermont Humanities supported in part by the National Endowment for Humanities.
This event is free, ADA accessible, and open to the public.