BY KAREN BOSSICK
Annie Pike Greenwood was born into comfort but followed her husband to the dry sagebrush lands of southern Idaho as a young wife.
There, a massive irrigation project promised to make the desert bloom and farmers rich. But it did not exactly pan out that way.
Rather than spend her time sulking, the well-educated Greenwood wrote “We Sagebrush Folks” in 1934, offering readers a candid look at how life amidst the sagebrush led some farmwives to despondency.
The Hailey Public Library will host “Reflections on Annie Pike Greenwood” on Thursday, Nov. 4.
The virtual presentation by Idaho Public TV producer and documentarian Marcia Franklin will start at 5:30 p.m. RSVP to kristin.fletcher@haileypubliclibrary.org.
The library will follow up the presentation with a book discussion of “We Sagebrush Folks” during its monthly Library Readers book discussion on Tuesday, Nov. 9.
“Annie Pike Greenwood’s story is remarkable,” said the library’s programs and engagement manager Kristin Fletcher, “She was a woman ahead of her time, writing with wit and honesty about social and political topics, including those that personally affected women in her community.”
Franklin, producer of Idaho Public TV’s Idaho Experience, encountered Greenwood’s book 60 years later and found herself fascinated. So much so, that he produced an Idaho Experience segment “We Sagebrush Folks: Annie Pike Greenwood’s Idaho.”
During the virtual presentation Franklin will discuss the life of Annie Pike Greenwood, her remarkable book and the series of discoveries that led to the 2017 documentary.
Marcia Franklin has been a journalist at Idaho Public Television since 1990. She’s the producer and host of Dialogue, a statewide conversation program focusing on the humanities, which began in 1994.
Franklin is also a producer for Idaho Experience, a history series, and Outdoor Idaho, a series that covers environmental and outdoor issues in Idaho. She is the past managing editor and host of Idaho Reports, the station's legislative program.
A native of Washington, DC, she has an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University.