“As a reader, he made you feel like you mattered,” said author and book club member Lisa Renee Johnson.

A few years ago, publishing executive Linda Duggins showed up at the National Book Club Conference’s annual event in a knee-high boot cast, the result of a broken foot. Eric Jerome Dickey, the New York Times bestselling author who chronicled Black life and love in his novels, could not bear the thought of Duggins limping around Atlanta.