Past Connections
Alice
McDermott, whose fifth and latest novel is Child of My Heart
and whose best-selling fourth novel, Charming Billy, won a National
Book Award, joins us from Bethesda, MD, for a mini-reunion with two University
of New Hampshire graduate classmates: Joseph
Freda of Sullivan County, NY, whose second novel, The Patience
of Rivers, came out earlier this year, and HVWC board member, Marilyn
Johnson, who will introduce both of them.
McDermott's
Child of My Heart takes place on Long Island, where she herself
grew up, and it conveys with her famous insight, humor, and grace a girl's
fifteenth summer providing care to various family and neighborhood children.
Freda's latest novel harks back to the same era—specifically the summer
of 1969, but in the Catskills, not far from the Woodstock Festival site.
McDermott says of Freda's book: "For anyone who came of age in the Sixties,
(it) feels like the novel we've been waiting for, an unforgettable work
of fiction that avoids both nostalgia and bitterness, and sounds, at last,
like truth." To be sure you get a seat for this trip through time, call
914-332-5953.
Suggested Donation: $5 ($3 for members)
The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the Taft Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.