Authors Christina Baker Kline and Monica Wood in Conversation

Description

Join #1 New York Times bestselling author Christina Baker Kline as she talks about her newest book “The Exiles” in conversation with award-winning Maine author Monica Wood on Saturday, Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. with the Jesup Memorial Library. This virtual discussion will take place on Zoom.
 
“The Exiles” captures the hardship, oppression, opportunity and hope of women’s lives focusing on the story of English convicts and an orphaned Aboriginal girl in nineteenth-century Australia. While most English convicts transported to Australia were men, 25,000 were women. Kline recreates the beginnings of a new society in a beautiful and challenging land, telling the story of Australia from a new perspective, through the experiences of Evangeline, Hazel and Mathinna. While life in Australia is punishing and often brutally unfair, it is also, for some, an opportunity: for redemption, for a new way of life, for unimagined freedom.
 
Library Journal writes, “Although men are credited for ‘discovering’ and ‘taming’ Australia, they play a very small role in this 19th-century-set novel from Kline, which tells of the women’s stories—not only that of the convicts, but also those who came freely, and, most important, those who were there first—the Aboriginal people. Both uplifting and heartbreaking, this beautifully written novel doesn’t flinch from the ugliness of the penal system but celebrates the courage and resilience of both the first peoples and the settlers who came after, voluntarily or not, to create a new home for themselves and their children.” And Kirkus writes, “Monumental. This episode in history gets a top-notch treatment by Kline, one of our foremost historical novelists. This fascinating 19th-century take on Orange Is the New Black is subtle, intelligent, and thrillingly melodramatic.”
 
A #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including “Orphan Train” and “A Piece of the World,” Kline is published in 40 countries. Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes, and have been chosen by hundreds of communities, universities and schools as “One Book, One Read” selections. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in publications such as the New York Times and the NYT Book Review, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Psychology Today and Salon. She splits her time between New York City and Mount Desert Island.
 
Wood is a novelist, memoirist and playwright. Her most recent novel, “The One-in-a-Million Boy,” has been published in 22 languages in 30 countries and won a Nautilus Award and the New England Society Book Award. She is also the author of “When We Were the Kennedys,” a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the Maine Literary Award. She lives in Maine.
 
Copies of “The Exiles” as well as the rest of Kline’s and Wood’s other books can be purchased from co-sponsor Sherman’s Books at any of their locations, on their website shermans.com or by calling 207-288-3161. Registration for this event is required to receive the Zoom link. To register fill out the online form at https://jesuplibrary.org/event/kline or email kchagnon@jesuplibrary.org.