09/06/2026
Blending memoir, history, and remarkable true stories, Jordan Patterson will trace the surprising journey from old-world Bohemia to Central Texas—from European families displaced by war and revolution to the Czech and Moravian immigrants who settled communities such as Taylor, Granger, and Corn Hill in the late nineteenth century. Along the way, she explores what survives when families leave one world behind and build another—and how Czech heritage continues to shape Central Texas generations later.
Joining Patterson for a special conversation will be Georgetown resident Lucy Oxberry, whose extraordinary family history bridges European nobility, diplomacy, art, and political exile. Oxberry came to the United States at age five after her family fled Communist Czechoslovakia when her father was blacklisted. Through her mother, she descends from Polish nobility. Her grandfather, renowned Czechoslovak diplomat Vladimír Radimský, served his country abroad, including as envoy to Sweden, while her great-uncle, Václav Radimský, became one of the most celebrated Czech Impressionist painters of his generation and lived and painted in France alongside the Impressionists.
Together, Patterson and Oxberry will bring this sweeping history down to the human scale—through stories of aristocracy and exile, immigration and reinvention, and the unexpected ways the old world of Bohemia still echoes in Georgetown and across Central Texas.
