The Life on the Mississippi Reading Retreat

The Life on the Mississippi Reading Retreat

The Life on the Mississippi Reading Retreat will be held on September 7, 2024. The two books are Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, published in 1883, and Rinker Buck’s Life on the Mississippi, published in 2022.  Twain and Buck both traveled down the Mississippi River and chronicled their experiences.  Twain reminisces on his life training as a steamboat captain in 1850s and writes about his travels along the Mississippi in 1882.  Buck travels down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers on a flat boat in the late 2010s to gain a deeper understanding of how the west was opened and its critical part in the development of the U.S. economy in the 1800s.  

Participants will start the day with a tour of the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum at 9 AM, followed by a discussion of Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, and enjoy a sharecropper’s lunch of beans, fried potatoes, cornbread, cobbler, and sweet tea. After lunch, participants will travel to the Historic Dyess Colony, only a 15-minute drive away, for a discussion of Buck’s work followed by a tour of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home and Dyess Colony Administration Center.

The cost of the retreat is $80. Members of the Dyess Colony Circle will receive a code to register at a discounted price. Registration includes copies of the two books, lunch, and tours of both museums. Upon registration, arrangements will be made to either ship the reading material or for local pickup. For questions on the retreat or membership, please email ptoombs@astate.edu or call 870-972-2893.