Third Tuesday Author: Louise Mengelkoch

Please join us on Tuesday, March 21 at 5:30pm for a presentation by Lake Oswego author Louise Mengelkoch. 

Her latest work, Over the River and Through the Woods: A Grandmother’s True Tale was a labor of love. “I started writing little anecdotes about my grandkids and this new experience of being a grandmother while I attended memoir writing classes at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center,” she said. “The other class members encouraged me to write more of them, so I did. Then the pandemic came and I decided to spend those long months putting them all together in a book.”

The book includes profiles of grandmothers Mengelkoch looks to for guidance and inspiration, including a 100-year-old grandma whose advice is to always have them go home feeling good about you. It also includes tales of Mengelkoch’s own, sometimes inept, attempts to be an inspirational grandmother herself; and some chapters delve into the special grandparenting issues she faced during the pandemic.

“I think my book is fairly unique,” said Mengelkoch. “I tried to pull back the curtain on one of life’s most romanticized experiences.”

Mengelkoch is a retired journalism professor who also published an anthology of memoirs from more than a dozen participants in memoir writing classes at the Lake Oswego Adult Community Center several years ago. The title of that book is Footsteps: Tales from the Past.

This event will take place in-person at the Library and will be livestreamed on LOPL's YouTube channel.

This presentation is made possible by the Friends of the Lake Oswego Public Library. Contact Alicia Yokoyama, Adult Services Librarian, at ayokoyama@lakeoswego.city if you have questions.