A virtual event with Larry Watson, author of The Lives of Edie Pritchard
in conversation with Mitch Teich
We’re excited to host a virtual event with Larry Watson, the acclaimed author of many critically acclaimed novels, most recently As Good As Gone, for a chat about his brand new novel, a multigenerational story of the West told through the history of one woman trying to navigate life on her own terms. Larry Watson is author of ten critically acclaimed books, and his fiction has received numerous prizes and awards. A film adaptation of Watson's novel Let Him Go is currently in production with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane and due to release in November 2020.
For this event, Watson will be in conversation with Mitch Teich, formerly Executive Producer of Lake Effect and now with North Country Public Radio. This event will be broadcast via Zoom. Registration is required – register right here via this link! Books are signed by Mr. Watson. Not bookplates, signed books!
Edie - smart, self‑assured, beautiful - always worked hard. She worked as a teller at a bank, she worked to save her first marriage, and she worked to raise her daughter even as her second marriage came apart. Edie just wanted a good life, but everywhere she turned, her looks defined her. Two brothers fought over her. Her second husband became unreasonably possessive and jealous. Her daughter resented her. And now, as a grandmother, Edie finds herself harassed by a younger man. It’s been a lifetime of proving that she is allowed to exist in her own sphere. The Lives of Edie Pritchard tells the story of one woman just trying to be herself, even as multiple men attempt to categorize and own her.
From the Jim Higgins review in the Journal Sentinel: "We see Edie at three junctures of her life: as a young Montana wife desired by her husband's fraternal twin circa 1967; as a remarried mother of a teenage daughter in a different small town in 1987; and as a twice-divorced grandmother of a troubled teen in 2007. Characters and memories from the first section thread through the later ones. Watson also slyly alludes to a dramatic event from his signature novel, Montana 1948), a book widely read by both book groups and schools."
Wednesday, July 22, 7:00 pm A virtual event with Gabriel Bump, author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong
in conversation with Nasif Rogers and Shana Lucas
We’re pleased to host a virtual event with Bump, who’ll chat about his darkly funny, heartfelt debut novel with Milwaukee educators Nasif Rogers and Shana Lucas. Cosponsored by UWM ACCESS. Broadcast via Zoom, this event requires registration - click right here to register now! And purchase your copy of Everywhere You Don't Belong for 20% off the list price until July 29. Alas, no signed copies this time. Some day Mr. Bump will visit and you can bring your book to the event to be signed. He's already working on his next novel, The New Naturals.
We're thrilled to be working with UWM Access on this event. Conversation partners Shana Lucas and Nasif Rogers are educators, who are, like Bump himself, Chicago natives. Bump received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and currently works as a teaching artist for Just Buffalo's Writing Center
Tommy Orange, author of There There, calls Bump’s novel “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.”
Thursday, July 23, 7:00 pmA virtual event with David S Pederson, author of Death Overdue
in conversation with Alan Karbel
Boswell (virtually) welcomes Wisconsin author Pederson back to celebrate his fifth novel in the Heath Barrington mystery series, Death Overdue. Pederson will chat with Shorewood Public Schools Librarian Emeritus Alan Karbel.
This event will be broadcast via Zoom, and registration will be required. Click right here to register today! Purchase your copy of Death Overdue for a 10% through at least July 30. And yes, copies are signed by Mr. Pederson!
In Pederson’s latest installment, Heath’s life was now in jeopardy. He had no choice but to confront his blackmailer and find out what he has. But then, the decision’s made for him when the blackmailer turns up dead. Is Heath a murderer? Even he isn’t sure, thanks to several double martinis. Other suspects include a voluptuous neighbor, a smarmy grocer, a ruthless gangster, Heath’s cousin Liz, who was once married to the blackmailer, and Miss Caldwell, a wily librarian who has eyes for the blackmailer’s wife. Heath tries to read between the lines to solve the case of a death overdue before he’s arrested for the crime.
Wisconsin’s David S Pederson is author of five Heath Barrington novels, including Death Checks In, a 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist. That's his second nomination, by the way.
Monday, July 27, 7:00 pmA virtual event with Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah
in conversation with Boswell's Daniel Goldin
Plimpton Prize Winner Kelli Jo Ford, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, joins us for a chat about her first novel, a remarkable debut that follows four generations of Cherokee women across four decades. She'll be in conversation with Bowell Book Company's proprietor Daniel Goldin. This event will be broadcast via Zoom, and registration is required. Click right here to register today. Crooked Hallelujah is discounted 20% at least through August 3.
It's 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine's father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church - a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. In lush and empathic prose, Kelli Jo Ford depicts what this family of proud, stubborn, Cherokee women sacrifices for those they love, amid larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture. This is a big-hearted and ambitious novel of the powerful bonds between mothers and daughters by an exquisite and rare new talent.
Ford's debut has earned starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly, which says "Ford's storytelling is urgent, her characters achingly human and complex, and her language glittering and rugged. This is a stunner." And don't forget about this great review in the San Francisco Chronicle from Julie Buntin: "Ford’s prose is so absorbing that you’re right there, helping Justine and Reney free a garbage bag full of goldfish or watching the sunset with them over Lake Tenkiller; their lives are difficult, yes, but full of joy, too. Now and then, Ford will turn up the volume in a sentence, sing a little. A list of gifts presented to Reney by her mother’s suitors includes a “bone-handled jackknife, a book of knots, the licks of a bobtailed dog” — the consonantal alliteration (those glorious k’s!), the living animal in the final clause, are a reminder that Ford’s writing is full of poetry. These stories stand up beautifully to rereading; they made me excited for what the writer will do next."More on the Boswell upcoming events page. Credits are Gabriel Bump by Jeremy Handrup, Larry Watson by Susan Watson, and Kelli Jo Ford by Val Ford Hancock.
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