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Anton DiSclafani Book Signing for "The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls", June 5
06/05/2013 7:00 pm
We are ecstatic to host St. Louisan Anton DiSclafani with her huge debut novel The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. (There was a bidding war for this, folks, and it is really just that good.)
Wed, June 5, 7pm at Schlafly Branch,
STL Public Library
A lush, sexy, evocative debut novel of family secrets and girls’-school rituals, set in the 1930s South.
It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrienne boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm—a world now partially shattered. As Thea grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, she finds herself enmeshed in a new order, one that will change her sense of what is possible for herself, her family, her country.
Weaving provocatively between home and school, the narrative powerfully unfurls the true story behind Thea’s expulsion from her family, but it isn’t long before the mystery of her past is rivaled by the question of how it will shape her future. Part scandalous love story, part heartbreaking family drama, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is an immersive, transporting page-turner—a vivid, propulsive novel about sex, love, family, money, class, home, and horses, all set against the ominous threat of the Depression—and the major debut of an important new writer.
Anton DiSclafani grew up in northern Florida, where she rode horses, competing nationally. She graduated from Emory University, and received her MFA from Washington University. She currently lives in Saint Louis, where she teaches creative writing at Washington University.
Copies of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls will be available for purchase and signing at the event. If you would like a signed copy but cannot attend the event just let us know!
Location:
- Street:
- Schlafly Branch, St. Louis Public Library
- Additional:
- 225 N. Euclid
- City:
- Saint Louis ,
- Province:
- Missouri
- Postal Code:
- 63108
- Country:
- United States
David Robertson Signing for "The Original Compromise", June 6
06/06/2013 7:00 pm
Join us for a discussion and signing with David Robertson, author of The Original Compromise: What the Constitution's Framers Were Really Thinking.
Mr. Robertson will be introduced by Missouri State Rep. Rory Ellinger with an interview and Q&A with KWMU's Don Marsh to follow. It should be quite a night!
Co-sponsored by the U. City Public Library.
The eighty-five famous essays by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay--known collectively as the Federalist Papers--comprise the lens through which we typically view the ideas behind the U.S. Constitution. But we are wrong to do so, writes David Brian Robertson, if we really want to know what the Founders were thinking.
In this provocative new account of the framing of the Constitution, Robertson observes that the Federalist Papers represented only one side in a fierce argument that was settled by compromise--in fact, multiple compromises. Drawing on numerous primary sources, Robertson unravels the highly political dynamics that shaped the document. Hamilton and Madison, who hailed from two of the larger states, pursued an ambitious vision of a robust government with broad power. Leaders from smaller states envisioned only a few added powers, sufficient to correct the disastrous weakness of the Articles of Confederation, but not so strong as to threaten the governing systems within their own states. The two sides battled for three arduous months; the Constitution emerged piece by piece, the product of an evolving web of agreements.
Robertson examines each contentious debate, including arguments over the balance between the federal government and the states, slavery, war and peace, and much more. In nearly every case, a fractious, piecemeal, and very political process prevailed. In this way, the convention produced a government of separate institutions, each with the will and ability to defend its independence. Majorities would rule, but the Constitution made it very difficult to assemble majorities large enough to let the government act.
Brilliantly argued and deeply researched, this book will change the way we think of "original intent." With a bracing willingness to challenge old pieties, Robertson rescues the political realities that created the government we know today.
David Robertson is Curator's Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of The Constitution and America's Destiny and Federalism and the Making of America.
Copies of THE ORIGINAL COMPROMISE will be available for purchase and signing at the event.
Location:
- Street:
- University City Public Library
- Additional:
- 6701 Delmar Blvd
- City:
- Saint Louis ,
- Province:
- Missouri
- Postal Code:
- 63130-4716
- Country:
- United States
