Author Sara Kosiba, Troy University in Alabama, reads from and discusses the book What Happens, a Library of Michigan 2016 Notable Book that she recently edited.

What Happens was originally published in France in 1926 by John Herrmann, who was a Lansing, Michigan native. It was seized by U.S. Customs for violating the 1922 Tariff Act, which banned the importing of obscene materials from foreign countries; the novel has never been published in the United States, until now. Hermann attended U-M from 1920-22, and the university is referenced throughout the coming-of-age novel. As part of the expatriate literary circle in Paris in the '20s, he became friends with Ernest Hemingway and other prominent writers.