News & Announcements

The Oxford Public Library played host to Novelist Terah Shelton Harris on Monday, Sept. 22, 2024, as she shared reflections on her recently released novel, Long After We Are Gone.

The author is a retired librarian and is currently the author in residence at Auburn University.

Harris’ audience was made up of users of the library who were fortunate to receive free copies of the book before the author’s visit, which was co-sponsored by the Caroline Marshall Draughton Center for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University and the Alabama Public Library Service.

“The book is about four very dysfunctional siblings – all wrapped up in their own demons and struggles – who have to return to keep their ancestral home from being sold out from beneath them,” Harris said.

The book was inspired by Harris’ fascination with the story of two North Carolina men who spent eight years in jail after refusing to leave the land purchased by their great grandfather a century earlier after it was sold from underneath them.

It was through the men’s story she learned of the legal term, heir property, which is a form of ownership in which descendants inherit an interest in the land and has been passed down through generations without legally documenting a designated owner.

Harris learned her mother-in-law in Dothan spent a decade trying to turn her family’s property from that risky, legal limbo into appropriately deeded properties for her children.

“Learning about that was the baking soda that made this story rise,” she said, adding this work of fiction “is all truth” when it comes to the “family drama that heir property can cause.”

“I like to write fiction to educate, and I hope this scares people into having their estate planning in order,” Harris said.

Many of those attending said they were satisfied with the ending, which Harris said was predetermined before she started writing.

“In my first book, One Summer in Savannah, I wrote the final chapter first and that is the chapter as it reads now,” she said. “I like to start at the ending and develop the story to that point.”

Harris, whose Oxford visit was her first on this lecture tour, said there has been interest from Hollywood in adapting the novel into a television program.

Harris’ books are just two of the wide variety of books available to check out at the Oxford Public Library.

The library, located at 110 E 6^th Street, is open Mondays from 9 a.m. until 6:30 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., Saturdays from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., and Sundays from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.

A full listing of library events and services is available by visiting www.oxfordpl.org. The phone number is 256-831-1750.