Julia Park Tracey & Susannah Kennedy to Appear at Hook & Ladder in Santa Rosa June 23rd
Julia Park Tracey, author of The Bereaved, and Susannah Kennedy, author of Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir will be appearing at Hook & Ladder in Santa Rosa on Sunday, June 23rd at 11am for an author talk and signing.
EVENT LOCATION:
2134 Olivet Rd, Santa Rosa, CA 95401
Find more event information here.
Featured Titles:
The Bereaved:
A Historical Novel about the Orphan Train and the Mothers Left Behind
Based on her research into her grandfather’s past as an adopted child, Julia Park Tracey has created a mesmerizing work of historical fiction illuminating the darkest side of the Orphan Train.
In 1859, women have few rights, even to their own children. When her husband dies and her children become wards of a predator, Martha—bereaved and scared—flees their beloved country home taking the children with her to the squalor of New York City. But as a naive woman alone, preyed on by male employers, she soon finds herself nearly destitute. The Home for the Friendless offers free food, clothing, and schooling to New York’s street kids and Martha secures a place temporarily for her children there. When she returns for them, she discovers that the Society has indentured her two eldest out to work via the Orphan Train, and has placed her two youngest for adoption. The Society refusing to help and with the Civil War erupting around her, Martha sets out to reclaim each of them.
Purchase The Bereaved here.
About Author Julia Park Tracey:
Julia Park Tracey is the author of the new historical fiction novel, The Bereaved. Julia’s ancestors and their stories have given her a trail to follow from New York and New England to the deep south and the Pacific Coast. She is the author or editor of six books with more historical fiction on the way. She has written for Redbook, HuffPost, The Sun, Salon, and Babble. She is also a partner and the Executive Editor at Sibylline Press. Sibylline Press is a new press dedicated to publishing the brilliant work of women over 50.
Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir:
A gripping memoir that shows what freedom looks like when we choose to examine the uncomfortable past
Jane is to the world a charismatic personality—opinionated, an inner-city teacher and public activist, a lover of Italy, proud and successful—who thrives on a carefully crafted life narrative. Susannah, her beautiful only daughter and her intended protégé, senses the stricter, darker truth, and fights to resist the control imposed on her by her mother’s narcissistic tale, especially as Susannah becomes a mother herself.
But then Jane at 75, healthy and fit, chooses suicide, leaving her daughter with grief and the unwelcome gift of 45 years of hidden diaries. Daring to “read” Jane after her death is like unlatching Pandora’s Box. For a year, Susannah twists and turns to the truths she uncovers, comparing what she remembers with what her mother put down in words. This process, accompanied by strange physical symptoms—memories awakening in the body—forces an understanding, allowing Susannah to calm herself and work through each of them, finding ultimately that truth wins out. As Susannah Kennedy re-lives her life through her mother’s eyes, she grapples with the ties between mothers and daughters and the choices parents make.
Purchase Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir here.
About Susannah Kennedy:
Susannah Kennedy is the author of Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir. A Berkeley and Oxford-educated anthropologist, Susannah Kennedy was born in India and raised in the United States. Later, she traveled extensively on her own, first in Italy, and then through the Middle East and India, settling for two years in Egypt before becoming a reporter in Dallas, Texas. At Oxford University, she specialized in Arab culture and politics, receiving her DPhil in social anthropology. She and her psychoanalyst husband lived and worked in Germany, raising three children in a thatched-roof farmhouse in the countryside outside Hamburg. Her mother’s suicide and its aftermath brought them back to Santa Cruz, California in 2017. They now reside in Marin County.
