An Evening with Iowa City Author Larry Baker

​Iowa City author Larry Baker will appear at the Pioneer Bookshop, 933 Main Street, Grinnell, at 7 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7. He will  read from his latest book, From a Distance. It is a tale of two teenagers from different backgrounds who find an honest sort of love that spans decades undercover. The setting moves between Charlston and New York City. The storyteller might not be completely sane. What is real and what is not? You will have to decide.

This event is co-hosted with the Pioneer Bookshop Book Club.

Larry Baker was raised an air force brat and spent much of his childhood traveling with his family all over the country and then overseas. He started elementary school in Louisiana, went to junior high in the Azores, and graduated from high school in Texas.

Baker, who holds a degree in English from the University of Oklahoma and a doctorate from the University of Iowa, put himself through college by managing movie theaters. He once ran the Admiral Drive-In in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one of the world's largest outdoor theaters and the inspiration for the Flamingo Drive-In Theatre in his book. During his "movie" career Baker was robbed four times, shot at once, stabbed once, beat up by a motorcycle gang, sold sex education books at intermission, found a dead woman sitting on a toilet at his drive-in, and caused a thirteen-car pileup on an interstate highway nearby with windblown fireworks.

Baker's other jobs have included time as a sportswriter, hotel clerk and house detective, pizza restaurant manager, Pinkerton security guard, ad agency writer, twice-elected and twice-defeated politician, standardized test writer and grader, and a short stint as master-of-ceremonies at a burlesque/strip club.

Baker lives with his wife and two children in Iowa City, Iowa, where he teaches history.