COURTESY
MANCHESTER — Northshire Bookstore will host journalist and author Sue Halpern for an author presentation at 3 p.m. Friday, March 9.
Halpern’s novel, described as “a wry, observant look at contemporary life and its refugees,” is an unforgettable tale of family … the kind you come from and the kind you create, according to a Northshire press release.
People are drawn to libraries for all kinds of reasons. Most come for the books themselves, of course; some come to borrow companionship. For head librarian Kit, the public library in Riverton, New Hampshire, offers what she craves most: Peace. There, no one expects Kit to talk about the calamitous events that catapulted her out of what she thought was a settled, suburban life. She can simply submerge herself in her beloved books and try to forget her problems.
But that changes when 15-year-old, home-schooled Sunny gets arrested for shoplifting a dictionary. The judge throws the book at Sunny — literally — assigning her to do community service at the library for the summer. Bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than her off-the-grid hippie parents, Sunny coaxes Kit out of her self-imposed isolation. They’re joined by Rusty, a Wall Street high-flyer suddenly crashed to earth.
In this little library that has become the heart of this small town, Kit, Sunny, and Rusty are drawn to each other, and to a cast of other offbeat regulars. As they come to terms with how their lives have unraveled, they also discover how they might knit them together again and finally reclaim their stories.
Halpern is the author, most recently, of ”A Dog Walked into a Nursing Home.” Her journalism and criticism have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, New York Review of Books, and Condé Nast Traveler, among many other publications.
She is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, where she runs the Narrative Journalism Fellowship. She was a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim fellow, and is married to the writer and activist Bill McKibben.
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