Lynda Rutledge is the bestselling author of "West with Giraffes," selected by Library of Congress-affiliated Texas Center for the Book as their 2023 Great Read and translated into 15 languages. She's also the author of "Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale," winner of the 2013 Writers League of Texas Fiction Award which was adapted into the major 2019 French film "La deniére folie de Claire Darling" starring Catherine Deneuve. Her fiction has won awards and residencies from Atlantic Center for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation, among many others.

Her latest novel, "Mockingbird Summer," set in a tiny segregated town in 1964 on the eve of massive cultural change, explores the impact of great books, the burden of potentia