Jenna Bush Hager is bringing her latest book club pick to the small screen.
Bush Hager, 42, announced her July Read With Jenna book club selection one month early on the Thursday, June 20, episode of Today, sharing with Hoda Kotb that her pick is “All the Colors of the Dark” by Chris Whitaker.
“My production company, Thousand Voices, is partnering with NBCUniversal Studio Group and Dinner Party Productions to turn this into a television series,” she revealed.
Bush Hager described the novel, which hits bookshelves on June 25, as a “genre-bending masterpiece” with “something for everybody.” She added: “It may be my most favorite book I’ve ever chosen. I know that’s not fair to the other books, but it’s true.”
Set in 1975 Missouri, the book follows 13-year-old protagonists Patch and Saint as young girls in their small town begin to go missing, “Patch and Saint are inseparable until Patch vanishes, leaving heartache and hurt in its wake,” Bush Hager explained. “But then, Saint embarks on a years-long mission to find him [and] uncover the mystery of the missing girls. It’s a story of obsession, deep dedication of friendship and the blinding light of hope.”
Another person who loved the book as much as Bush Hager was her husband, Henry Hager. “[He] read it in one week. We know Henry Hager can’t read anything in a week!” she joked.
Later on Thursday’s episode of Today With Hoda & Jenna, Bush Hager described the novel as “if Room, which is a book I loved, To Kill a Mockingbird and The Goldfinch had a baby.” She went on to note: “I know that you guys will love this. It looks thick, but I read it over one weekend. It’s so propulsive. You will start and be done before you know it.”
While fans will have to wait to see the story play out on TV, Bush Hager is hosting a virtual book club discussion with Whitaker on July 23. She and the author are also set to appear at this year’s Aspen Ideas Festival, which kicks off on June 23. (Fans can register for the pair’s virtual discussion on the Read With Jenna website.)
Bush Hager launched her book club in 2019 and has shared several of her favorite reads with fans over the years. Back in 2022, the former First Daughter signed a production deal with Universal Studio Group (which is owned by NBCUniversal) to adapt her book club pics into TV shows and movies.
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“What makes me most excited is that I love all these authors, so I want as many audiences as possible to get to see their work,” she told Kotb, 59, on a February 2022 episode of Hoda & Jenna.
She announced her first book-to-screen adaptation, The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson, in August 2022. “The Feather Thief has been a favorite book of mine since its release in 2018,” she said in a statement at the time, per Deadline. “Kirk Wallace Johnson is a talented storyteller, and to work with him to adapt this wildly brilliant book for the screen is a dream.”
No word on when The Feather Thief TV series will premiere has been announced, though Bush Hager noted on an August 2022 episode of Hoda & Jenna that the show was still in its “baby phase.”
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