Come to the library and read aloud to a specially trained dog.
The dogs, in contrast to a human, don’t judge the individual, aren’t grading the individual, and hopefully that allows the children to build some confidence in their reading skills.
Come to the library and read aloud to a specially trained dog.
The dogs, in contrast to a human, don’t judge the individual, aren’t grading the individual, and hopefully that allows the children to build some confidence in their reading skills.
Children ages birth - 6 years old are invited to come to the library in their pajamas and listen to some stories, sing some songs and do a craft. Everone will go home tired!
Registration is required and begins on Tuesday, October 30th.
Children ages birth - 6 years old are invited to come to the library in their pajamas and listen to some stories, sing some songs and do a craft. Everone will go home tired!
Registration is required and begins on Tuesday, October 30th.
Bring your imagination to the library for our exciting Library Building Blocks Club. We will spend about an hour developing masterpieces with lego blocks.
The creations will be on display in the Boys' and Girls' Library for all to see. This program is open to children ages 3 and up.
***Please note that children under 10 years old must be accompanied by an adult***
Bring your imagination to the library for our exciting Library Building Blocks Club. We will spend about an hour developing masterpieces with lego blocks.
The creations will be on display in the Boys' and Girls' Library for all to see. This program is open to children ages 3 and up.
***Please note that children under 10 years old must be accompanied by an adult***
Explore your creativity and learn how to make your own holiday wreath or centerpiece decorating with an abundance of mixed foliage, ribbon, pinecones, holiday ornaments and berries! The workshop includes all materials, refreshments and festive music.
$45 payment required within 48 hours of registering. (cash or check made payable to the Westfield Athenaeum).
**This event is being held at St. John's Lutheran Church, 60 Broad St., Westfield, MA.**
Explore your creativity and learn how to make your own holiday wreath or centerpiece decorating with an abundance of mixed foliage, ribbon, pinecones, holiday ornaments and berries! The workshop includes all materials, refreshments and festive music.
$45 payment required within 48 hours of registering. (cash or check made payable to the Westfield Athenaeum).
**This event is being held at St. John's Lutheran Church, 60 Broad St., Westfield, MA.**
Have you always wanted to learn to knit or do you want to improve your skills? Students will learn to cast on, knit, purl, and cast off. Kids will take home their knitting needles and yarn to continue building their skills at home.
This is a 3-week program and you are registering for all three weeks!
Registration is required and space is limited.
Registration begins Tuesday, October 30th.
Ages 8 - 16.
CONTACT: Miss Susan 413-562-6158 x5 pbrose@westath.org
Have you always wanted to learn to knit or do you want to improve your skills? Students will learn to cast on, knit, purl, and cast off. Kids will take home their knitting needles and yarn to continue building their skills at home.
This is a 3-week program and you are registering for all three weeks!
Registration is required and space is limited.
Registration begins Tuesday, October 30th.
Ages 8 - 16.
CONTACT:
Miss Susan
413.562.6158 x5
pbrose@westath.org
Kids in grades 1 & 2 are invited to join us to read the monthly book together then have some fun with activities based on the book. The first 10 people to register will get a free copy of the book to keep!
Sponsored by the Friends of the Westfield Athenaeum.
Registration is required and space is limited.
CONTACT: Mary Regan 562-6158 x5 mregan@westath.org
Kids in grades 1 & 2 are invited to join us to read the monthly book together then have some fun with activities based on the book. The first 10 people to register will get a free copy of the book to keep!
Sponsored by the Friends of the Westfield Athenaeum.
Registration is required and space is limited.
CONTACT:
Mary Regan
562.6158 x5
mregan@westath.org
Isabel Marcheselli is a singer-songwriter musician with a personal blend of classical, modern and original music. Hailing from New York City and educated at Cornell University and Hunter College, she has performed publicly for many years. Isabel has planned a special “Community Sing” as the second part of her concert. Start your holiday season with a delightful mix of classical and contemporary holiday inspired music and then join Isabel as she leads us in a sing-a-long of music to uplift your spirit.
Isabel Marcheselli is a singer-songwriter musician with a personal blend of classical, modern and original music. Hailing from New York City and educated at Cornell University and Hunter College, she has performed publicly for many years. Isabel has planned a special “Community Sing” as the second part of her concert. Start your holiday season with a delightful mix of classical and contemporary holiday inspired music and then join Isabel as she leads us in a sing-a-long of music to uplift your spirit.
Whips of Westfield:The Rise and Decline of an American Industry with Bruce Cortis Meet the Author from 5 -6:30. Book will be availbale for purchase. Presentation to follow.
Please join us at the Athenaeum as Bruce Cortis presents a program that focuses on his research of the Whip industry beginning in the early 1800’s through the mid twentieth century. Topics will include: early whip makers and companies, inventions and patents, fires, labor issues and in general the growth and evolution of the industry during its heyday leading up to the great consolidation of the industry in the 1890’s through the early 1900’s. Bruce’s book, Whips of Westfield, The Rise and Decline of an American Industry, is the basis for his presentation. That volume is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2018 and is planned for availability by mid-November 2018.
Whips of Westfield:The Rise and Decline of an American Industry with Bruce Cortis Meet the Author from 5 -6:30. Book will be availbale for purchase. Presentation to follow.
Please join us at the Athenaeum as Bruce Cortis presents a program that focuses on his research of the Whip industry beginning in the early 1800’s through the mid twentieth century. Topics will include: early whip makers and companies, inventions and patents, fires, labor issues and in general the growth and evolution of the industry during its heyday leading up to the great consolidation of the industry in the 1890’s through the early 1900’s. Bruce’s book, Whips of Westfield, The Rise and Decline of an American Industry, is the basis for his presentation. That volume is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2018 and is planned for availability by mid-November 2018.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Chicago Tribune
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures-in his own practices as well as others'-as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life-all the way to the very end.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, Chicago Tribune
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures-in his own practices as well as others'-as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life-all the way to the very end.
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
“A page turner...An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis." —New York Times Book Review.
A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
“A page turner...An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis." —New York Times Book Review.
Before you jump on a highway and zip past winding rivers and picturesque church steeples rising from the greenery, read this. Inns & Adventures will make you slow down, explore and stay the night. A combination of hiking, history and hospitality with a dash of humor, this blends guidebook nuts and bolts information with hard-earned wisdom and backwoods knowledge.
Author Alison O'Leary is a longtime journalist who has worked for newspapers from Austin, Texas to Reno, Nevada; Bath, Maine and suburban Boston. She was a correspondent for the Boston Globe for several years before completing her B.A. at Emerson College and becoming editor of The Boston Parents' Paper magazine and skirt! Boston magazine.
An avid outdoorswoman, Inns and Adventures appealed to Alison's sense of adventure and love for all things New England. Her favorite part of the book is dreaming of a sequel while exploring new hikes, swimming under waterfalls, and tearing down white knuckle mountain bike trails.
Before you jump on a highway and zip past winding rivers and picturesque church steeples rising from the greenery, read this. Inns & Adventures will make you slow down, explore and stay the night. A combination of hiking, history and hospitality with a dash of humor, this blends guidebook nuts and bolts information with hard-earned wisdom and backwoods knowledge.
Author Alison O'Leary is a longtime journalist who has worked for newspapers from Austin, Texas to Reno, Nevada; Bath, Maine and suburban Boston. She was a correspondent for the Boston Globe for several years before completing her B.A. at Emerson College and becoming editor of The Boston Parents' Paper magazine and skirt! Boston magazine.
An avid outdoorswoman, Inns and Adventures appealed to Alison's sense of adventure and love for all things New England. Her favorite part of the book is dreaming of a sequel while exploring new hikes, swimming under waterfalls, and tearing down white knuckle mountain bike trails.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.
Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.
An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds.
Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black and her children’s father is white. Embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.
Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America. It is a majestic new work from an extraordinary and singular author.
An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing examines the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power – and limitations – of family bonds.
Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. His mother, Leonie, is in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is black and her children’s father is white. Embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances, she wants to be a better mother, but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use.
When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.
Rich with Ward’s distinctive, lyrical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first century America. It is a majestic new work from an extraordinary and singular author.
Realm of the Polar Bear: The Norwegian Arctic with Amy Dane
Take a virtual cruise around the island of Spitzbergen – or as much can be navigated given ice conditions. Walk through the landscape, encounter the wildlife and be on the lookout for the colorful flora that populates the tundra. Visit some of the few and far-between settlements whose inhabitants brave this cold and often bleak part of the world and learn about the strong-willed pioneers who jockeyed for first place and even paid with their lives to reach their destination.
Realm of the Polar Bear: The Norwegian Arctic with Amy Dane
Take a virtual cruise around the island of Spitzbergen – or as much can be navigated given ice conditions. Walk through the landscape, encounter the wildlife and be on the lookout for the colorful flora that populates the tundra. Visit some of the few and far-between settlements whose inhabitants brave this cold and often bleak part of the world and learn about the strong-willed pioneers who jockeyed for first place and even paid with their lives to reach their destination.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding
IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: “I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.”
What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story — from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story —touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector — while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.
The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding
IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: “I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.”
What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story — from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story —touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector — while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.
In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.
Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.
With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.
