MADISON, Wisconsin ― Sipping coffee and nibbling slices of cake, book club members paged through tattered copies of Alice Walker’s novel “Meridian” and discussed the death imagery throughout the first few chapters of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s work.

They took turns reading out loud, helping those who had difficulty deciphering some words.

All of the paperbacks had been donated. These book club members can’t afford to buy books. And none has bookshelves at home.

They don’t have homes.

The homeless book club at Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, gathers every Tuesday morning to discuss books, short stories and poems and meet with authors who visit in person or via Skype. They frequently watch a film on the same topic as the book they’re reading.

Some come because they love to read, some come because it’s something to do, others come for the camaraderie. Just like any book club.

“The neat thing about the book club, whether or not we were discussing the book, we always started off talking about the book and then we strayed off in how the book was affecting their lives,” said Mark Wilson, a volunteer in Bethel’s homeless ministry who helped start the club.

Books range from classics to potboilers, bestsellers to self-published titles. They’re donated by publishers, authors, parishioners, other book clubs and in one instance, by a woman who donated $300 she won playing fantasy football.

Some books have been given by schools after students read them for a class ― copies of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” were recently donated by Edgewood College in Madison ― while some come from book festivals and reading programs.

The size of the group varies from week to week ― from three to 25 ― and is often weather-dependent, more coming when it’s cold or rainy or when authors visit.

“Of course as people get jobs or move away or they go to jail, there’s an ebb and flow with our regulars,” the Rev. Alison Williams said.

Book club members request titles and like any group some want to read only fiction while others like true crime or memoirs.

Last December, the group read Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” After reading Rudyard Kipling’s short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,” they watched the movie “Jumanji.” They plan to watch the film version of “The Help” while reading “Meridian.”

“A lot of people say ‘Oh, it’s a homeless book group, here’s some self-help books,’ but just because they’re homeless doesn’t mean they want to read self-help books,” Williams said. “They want to read good fiction and other great books just like everyone else.”

Garth Stein met with the group via Skype when the club read his bestselling novel “The Art of Racing in the Rain.” Club members prepared questions ahead of time for Stein, and the club leader phoned him afterward to tell him how much they appreciated his visit.

“The conversation was just as intelligent and full as any other conversation I do with any other groups,” Stein said.

To many, the homeless are invisible, Stein said.

“Most of the people walk by them on the street and don’t see them, they avert their eyes. ... You can take away someone’s car or house but you can’t take away someone’s imagination.”

Madison’s homeless book club was started by a Bethel Homeless Ministries volunteer who heard about a similar club in Boston.

Williams, a Lutheran minister who majored in English and joined Bethel a few years ago, has fielded calls from homeless ministries and organizations elsewhere in the U.S. interested in starting book clubs.

So far, though, she only knows of the book clubs in Boston and Madison.

Like most clubs, not everyone reads the books or finishes them. Some nap. Others are actively engaged. By reading out loud, even those who didn’t or couldn’t read the book are still able to participate in the discussion.

Though many homeless are living on the street or in shelters because of mental illness or substance abuse issues, they’re not illiterate. Many are avid readers.

“I’ve had an advertising executive, an attorney, a former Marine ― all homeless,” said Wilson, who helped start the homeless ministry at Bethel after a homeless man died on the church’s steps on a cold winter night several years ago. “The education levels don’t really mean much. They’re a lot more resourceful and intelligent than people think.”

At a recent book club meeting in a conference room at the church a few blocks from the state Capitol, nine book club members sat at tables pushed together in a circle.

Melvin Donaldson has gone to book club meetings for two years. He enjoys history books and fiction. Donaldson no longer has a library card, but he frequents the library as well as the homeless ministry at Bethel, which is open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.

“If it’s sunny out, I’m usually out running around. I go to the library and read comic books,” Donaldson said.

Because of their shared experiences of living on the street or in homeless shelters, the reaction to some books is often different from those in more conventional book clubs. When they read John Grisham’s “An Innocent Man” some club members talked about their experiences in the American justice system.

“We all hated (Jeannette Walls’ memoir) ‘The Glass Castle.’ It was all about child abuse and homelessness, which hit too close to home,” Williams said.

By Meg Jones

(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

(MCT Information Services)