Book Signing with Bonnie Jo Campbell

The best-selling author of The Waters (a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick) returns with a tale of love, transgression, and the miraculous healing power of the holiday table.Bonnie Jo Campbell, a master of rural American fiction, brings us a hair-raising winter tale to warm us by the fireside. In this contemporary Christmas Carol, Campbell has created a gritty, spooky, and ultimately heartening holiday story that unfolds in an isolated farmhouse. It is the night before Christmas in a small town in Michigan, and a young woman is haunted by her father’s death. She has been silently penitent for nine years, but her guilt and grief have estranged her from her community and her family. She has taken refuge in the natural world of the plants and trees she tends, but on this anniversary of the tragedy, the supernatural landscape is rattling its chains.

When a surprise guest appears at the (dreaded) Christmas Eve dinner, the family begins to open up and reveal dangerous secrets and crimes nobody is willing to face. Within this darkest chaos, a sliver of light appears, showing a way to reclaim communion and even a sense of humor. While redemption is never easy or wholesale, the story that a family creates together can heal wounds.

Campbell’s writing is rapturous and darn near Shakespearean as she conjures storms of vengeance and grief that give way to the radiance of truth and love.
— Donna Seaman - Booklist (starred review)

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of seven works of fiction, including The Waters, a national bestseller, and American Salvage, finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and donkeys.

Admission: Free