Open Memorial Day 10 am to 5 pm. Lalita Tademy Event Preview for this Wednesday at 5 pm. And Just for You, The Following Week's Events as Well.

We're open Memorial Day, 10 am to 5 pm.

Wednesday, May 27, 5 pm (note time):
Lalita Tademy, author of Citizens Creek and Cane River.

Join us at Boswell when The New York Times bestselling author of the Oprah Book Club Pick Cane River brings us the now-released-in-paperback Citizens Creek*, the evocative story of a once-enslaved man who buys his freedom after serving as a translator during the American Indian Wars, and his granddaughter, who sustains his legacy of courage.

Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his tenth birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Native Americans, settlers, and Blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals. His talent earned him money--but would it also grant him freedom? And what would become of him and his family in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Indian Removal westward?

Cow Tom's legacy lives on--especially in the courageous spirit of his granddaughter Rose. She rises to leadership of the family as they struggle against political and societal hostility intent on keeping blacks and Indians oppressed. But through it all, her grandfather's indelible mark of courage inspires her--in mind, in spirit, and in a family legacy that never dies.

Clyde Edgerton, writing in Garden and Gun: “Tademy knows when to analyze, dissect, back off, go deep, or skirt without comment. The well-paced suspenseful narrative excludes white hat-black hat-happy myth cycle that is sometimes found in our fiction (and nonfiction). She has not only given us a feel for the grit of our nation’s 1800s—misery, war, disease, and displacement—but she also rendered the drama inside a single family, those tales of ordinary folk caught up in war, cultural confusion, and hostility.”

And from this starred Booklist review, published by the American Library Association: “Each of the novel's characters speaks in a compelling voice, especially Amy, the steadfast matriarch, and her granddaughter, Rose, to whom Tademy devotes the final third of her completely engrossing and historically accurate family saga, which in many ways mirrors her own family history.”

And here's a preview of the following week:


Tuesday, June 2, signing at 1:15 pm at Marquette Law School's Eckstein Hall, 1215 W. Michigan Ave., following a sold-out conversation with Mike Gousha:
David Axelrod, author of Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
Books will be for sale, courtesy of Boswell. For those waiting for the signing, the conversation will be piped into the Marquette Law School atrium.

Wednesday, June 3, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Margaret Lazarus Dean, author of Leaving Orbit: Notes from the Last Days of American Spaceflight.
This event is co-sponsored by Spaceport Sheboygan.
Winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Leaving Orbit is an “eloquent farewell to NASA’s space shuttle program” (Lynn Sherr) that will leave you with a serious “case of space brain” (Ander Monson).

Please note the event with James Longhurst, author of Bike Battles, at Ben's Cycle, has been rescheduled for September.

Thursday, June 4, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Alexandra Petri, author of A Field Guide to Awkward Silences, in conversation with Lake Effect's Mitch Teich.
"If John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris had a baby…they would never let Petri babysit it." Here's Petri in The Washington Post, ruminating on various fonts, after reading that you should never print your resume using Times New roman.

Friday, June 5, 7 pm, at Boswell:
A Ticketed event with Neal Stephenson, author of Seveneves and Cryptonomicon.
Per Jim Higgins in the Journal Sentinel, "Stephenson imagines, in realistic detail, the on-the-fly construction of an ad-hoc space ark with a diverse population of human beings — as well as overlapping chaos and turmoil back on Earth. With a large, highly differentiated cast of female characters, from a resourceful nanotech engineer to a cunning president of the United States."

Saturday, June 6, 2 pm, at Boswell:
Maggie Messitt, author of The Rainy Season: Three Lives in the New South Africa.
Messitt opens a window into the complicated reality of daily life in South Africa through the remote Bushveld community.

also on Saturday, June 6, 2 pm, at Washington Park Library, 2121 N Sherman Blvd.:
Jennifer Morales, author of Meet Me Halfway: Milwaukee Stories.
Meet me Halfway has been picked as the 2015 Common Read for UWM incoming freshmen.

*The official on sale date of Citizens Creek is June 2, but they were able to get us books early for this special event. Sometimes this can be done and sometimes it can't. It depends on the publisher, the production schedule, and whether it is really a scheduled on sale or a more firm laydown date.