Three Midwest Indie Bookstores Present Novelist Stewart O’Nan

On Monday, March 21st at 7 PM, join three iconic Midwest bookstores (The Book Stall, Books and Company, and The Book Cellar) as they team up to present novelist Stewart O’Nan. He’ll be in conversation with fellow writer Nickolas Butler. They’ll be talking about O’Nan’s acclaimed new novel, Ocean State.

More About the Book: In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there is thus one of the build-up to, and fall-out from, the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister Marie, who reflects on that doomed autumn of 2009 with all the wisdom of hindsight.

“Prolific, protean O’Nan examines a familiar subject, hard-pressed working-class life in America, through the lens of a Rhode Island murder…the book is rich in social detail…and warmed by O’Nan’s customary tenderness for ordinary lives. Everyday People was the title of one of his first great novels, in 2001, and depicting everyday people with sensitive acuity remains one of his principal artistic achievements here…finely rendered with poignant realism.”—Kirkus Reviews