Friends of the Simsbury Public Library Spring 2022 Author Luncheon with Paula McLain

Friends of the

Spring 2022 Author Luncheon with Paula McLain

Thursday, May 19noon-2  p.m.

Hop Meadow Country Club

The Friends of the Simsbury Public Library will host New York Times bestselling author, Paula McLain for our 2022 Annual Author Luncheon. This sell-out event features a talk by an award-winning author, delicious lunch, and a beautiful spring setting at Hop Meadow Country Club.  This year, we are excited to host New York Times bestselling author Paula McLain who will discuss her latest book, When the Stars Go Dark, a psychological thriller set in 1993 Northern California. 10 years after the release of The Paris Wife (now over 2 million copies in print), Paula who is known for writing historical novels starring strong, real-life women from history has switched genres and written a literary suspense novel about another powerful woman, this time, a detective running from her own traumatic past.  Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical she tells the story of Anna Hart, a missing persons detective who flees to her hometown of Mendocino to grieve, and finds herself caught up in finding a missing teenage girl. 

When the Stars Go Darkis Paula’s most personal novel yet, and even though she has written a memoir of growing up in foster care (Like Family, 2003), this is the first time she has truly opened up about the trauma and abuse she experienced as a child. In the novel, she has turned the lens inward and put herself and her backstory into the amazing heroine at the center of this book.  Publishers Weekly called it, “*A stunning crime novel…McLain matches poetic prose with deep characterizations as she shines a light on the kindness in her characters’ souls. Fans of literary suspense won’t be able to put this one down.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review).

Paula McLain is the critically-acclaimed author of the bestselling novels, Love and Ruin, Circling the Sun, The Paris Wife, and A Ticket to Ride, the memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses, and two collections of poetry. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, O: The Oprah Magazine, Town & Country, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Paula was born in Fresno, California in 1965. After being abandoned by both parents, she and her two sisters became wards of the California Court System, moving in and out of various foster homes for the next fourteen years. When she aged out of the system, she supported herself by working as a nurse’s aide in a convalescent hospital, a pizza delivery girl, an auto-plant worker, a cocktail waitress–before discovering she could (and very much wanted to) write. Paula received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996, and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony as well as the recipient of fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowments for the Arts. She lives in Ohio with her family.

The luncheon and talk will be held at the Hop Meadow Country Club on

This is a popular event with limited seating so get your reservations in early!  For groups, please indicate on the reservation form with whom you'll be sitting or package your forms together. Please RSVP before May 12. Sign up using the reservation form on page..., or register on-line via the library’s Event Calendar at https://www.simsburylibrary.info/fspl-author-lunch/or pick up a

reservation form at the library's reference desk.  Questions? Call the library at (860) 658-7663.