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This year’s selection for One Book One Campus, “Memory of Water,” a novel by Emmi Itaranta, depicts a world where water shortages overshadow daily life. With droughts happening in places like California, water shortages are already a reality.
Synopsis of Memory of Water from the publisher, Harper Collins:
Global warming has changed the world’s geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria’s father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.
But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father’s death the army starts watching their town-and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship. Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.
Millersville University’s One Book One Campus program began in 2007. Required reading for all freshmen prior to the start of the fall semester, the program is intended to stimulate discussion and critical thinking around a common reading. Each year, a book selection is made by the One Book Committee, which is comprised of faculty, students and administrators. The committee aims to choose books that will engage and challenge incoming students on a specific topic or theme, while introducing them to interdisciplinary discussion and new academic expectations.
The campus community is invited to attend the fall event, “Memory of Water: Campus Conversations,” planned for Tuesday, October 6 at 7 p.m, in the Lehr Room. For additional information and related events, go to: https://blogs.millersville.edu/oboc/.
The book can be purchased from the University Store and online booksellers. Questions can be directed to co-chairs Marilyn Parrish (Marilyn.Parrish@millersville.edu) and Jen Shettel (Jennifer.Shettel@millersville.edu).
