Meet Sibyls Laura Bonazzoli and Maureen Anne Jennings at Rockland Public Library in ME

Join authors Laura Bonazzoli and Maureen Anne Jennings for: What Did She Know and When Did She Know It? Keeping Secrets in Fiction. Laura is the author of Our Share of Morning, a novel of two sisters coming of age in the 1930s and 40s in a neighborhood scarred by the secret it holds. Maureen is the author of Bartender Wanted, a Rose Leary Mystery set in the 1980s in a West Village bar. Laura and Maureen will discuss the methods and challenges of keeping secrets in fiction, read from their novels, and take audience questions. Books will be available for sale and signings, along with light refreshments.

About Our Share of Morning:

Her eyes were fixed on my face. “Men,” she said simply. “And women. Make mistakes. Blissful, dreadful mistakes. But more often than not, women pay the price.”

1933. A three-story tenement in a mill town west of Boston. In the third-floor apartment hangs a portrait of unforgettable beauty: Ada, a neighbor’s daughter, who disappeared years before. In the apartment below, two sisters—thoughtful, sensible Violet and gifted but fragile Glory—come of age unaware of how the missing Ada haunts their lives. As disease and poverty threaten their family, they are each other’s refuge. But as they reach adulthood, the fallout from a broken love affair while unraveling the mystery of Ada—threatens their bond.

Narrated in turns by each of the sisters, Our Share of Morning reveals how contagion, misogyny, and a series of betrayals force Violet and Glory to face immutable loss. Poignant and poetic, the novel is a meditation on meaning, fate, forgiveness, and the fierce endurance of sisterly love.

About Laura Bonazzoli:

Laura Bonazzoli’s short-story cycle, Consecration Pond, was praised by Publishers Weekly as poetic and haunting. Her short fiction, poetry, and essays have been published in dozens of literary magazines and several anthologies. She works as a freelance editor and ghostwriter, and teaches creative writing with Maine Media Workshops. She holds a BA from Regis College in Weston, Massachusetts, and an MFA from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She lives in Midcoast Maine. Our Share of Morning is her first novel.

About Bartender Wanted:

Gritty glamour in 1980s New York City doesn’t come cheap. To afford even her fifth-floor walkup, Rose Leary needs a gig. Bartending at a neighborhood joint subsidizes her writing career, even if she does fill a dead woman’s platforms. Rose speculates about who killed her predecessor, but her novel’s looming deadline demands her attention. When another bartender dies, Rose pictures her name scrawled at the top of the murderer’s hit list. Frightening phone calls and ominous gifts soon turns everyone she meets into a suspect Rose struggles to expose the killer in a desperate race to save herself and her work. Set in the West Village restaurant and bar scene, where fishmongers and greengrocers fill the stores now colonized by designers, this mystery is written with wit, intelligence, and a distinctive style, creating an intoxicating signature cocktail.

About Maureen Anne Jennings:

Maureen Anne Jennings has worn the hats of a journalist, copywriter, editor, publishing consultant, media manager, book festival director, and Fillmore East staffer. She owns more than 100 hats, not all of them work related. The Rose Leary Series of mysteries includes Bartender Wanted and One Too Many. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthologies Traveler’s Tales Italy, Cartwheels on the Faultline, and Saltwater Sweetwater, as well as in various periodicals. After the obligatory waitressing in college, she squandered a few years behind the bar at various dives in lower Manhattan. She also owned and operated a pub in northern California. Be careful what you write about. She graduated from Fordham University summa cum laude in comparative literature and still reads as many novels as she possibly can. Words are her life.