Jenna Bush Hager selected Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping as the latest pick for her Today show book club.
Cole’s debut novel, published Tuesday by Knopf, follows a young writer who moves in with his conservative grandfather and uncle in Kentucky shortly before the 2016 election. He finds work as a groundskeeper for a college, where he also enrolls in a writing course, and falls in love with a Bosnian Muslim refugee.
In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus wrote of the book, “perceptive and endearing, this novel signals the arrival of a talented new voice in fiction.”
“It’s about family, unconditional love, and what binds us,” Hager said. “Y’all, in a time where everybody’s so divided, we need this book. We need it.”
Cole talked about the origin of his novel with the Today show.
“Anytime you meet somebody, there’s always a level of self-consciousness and you’re sort of seeing yourself through their eyes. So that was all at play in writing the love story,” he said. “While the events of the book are fictional, they do have their basis in my own experiences of homesickness, working as a tree trimmer and just trying to navigate my relationship with Kentucky.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
