Building upon the impressive precedents of painted murals in libraries and public buildings across the United States, northwest Indiana artist Tom Torluemke has taken on a task that he views as the opportunity of a lifetime.

Torluemke used the written word as inspiration for his new mural, "The Book of Life: The people we know, the experiences we have and the conditions under which we live," for the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. The recently-installed mural, located in the Nina Mason Pulliam Indianapolis Special Collections Room on the 6th floor of Central Library, was loosely inspired by the novel, The Magnificent Ambersons, written by Indiana author Booth Tarkington, who won the Pulitzer Prize for this work in 1919.