BookFest is just three days away!!

Howdy all!

Just wanted to give one last quick reminder that if you haven't purchased your tickets yet for our Friday night event, "An Evening With The Authors," be sure to do so ASAP! Today is the last day to purchase tickets. This is going to be a wonderful event with wine, dessert, and hors d'oeuvres from Fairy Godmothers Enchanted Catering. Trust me, you don't want to miss the best spinach artichoke dip on the planet!!

And of course you'll get to meet and talk to BookFest's three main authors, which is pretty cool.

Also, don't forget that Mark Levine, author of The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, will be having a F-R-E-E self-publishing seminar at ArtCase on Bridge Street during the festival at 2:15 p.m. If you've ever wanted to write a book and get it into print, you won't want to miss this informative seminar. Just be sure to send me an e-mail to reserve your spot (valbrkich@gmail.com). Space is limited!

Thanks!
Val

Correction

Hi All!

A correction to the previous blog entry.

"An Evening With the Authors," the special gathering with BookFest's three featured authors, will take place on Friday, Sept. 11 at 6:30 p.m., not the 12th, as we noted in the last blog.

I hope you all can make it. Be sure to order your tickets today!

Thanks!

Bridgewater BookFest UPDATE

Greetings BookFest fanatics!

It's been a long time since we've updated the blog. Sorry. We've just been so busy getting things ready for this year's big event on Sept. 12! Check out bridgewaterbookfest.com for all the latest updates.

We're really excited about our special Friday evening addition to BookFest - "An Evening With the Authors" (Sept. 11, 6:30 p.m.). This wonderful event, held inside our main event tent, gives you the chance to meet our main authors before anyone else! We'll also have wine, great gift baskets to raffle off for charity, and hors d’oeuvres and dessert provided by Fairy Godmothers Enchanted Catering.

We have a limited number of tickets available, so be sure to get yours now!

BookFest Book Club UPDATE!
Due to scheduling conflicts with many of our members, we're going to postpone this week's book club meeting until next week. We'd like to reschedule it for next Wednesday night, same time (7pm), same place (Jeffries). Please let me know ASAP if you're available to meet that day to discuss Jonis Agee's "Sweet Eyes." Drop me a line at valbrkich@gmail.com

Thanks...and stay tuned for more BookFest updates in the next couple weeks!
Val

Greetings BookFest Book Clubbers!

Can you believe that Bridgewater BookFest is just about two months away!?!

Just a quick reminder that this month's selection is A Conservationist Manifesto, the latest release from BookFest featured author Scott Russell Sanders. We'll be meeting at Jeffries Landing on July 31 at 7 p.m. to discuss the book. All are welcome!

(From Sanders's website:)
A Conservationist Manifesto was published on Earth Day, April 22, by Indiana University Press. The book addresses what I take to be the greatest challenge facing our society, which is to shift from a culture based on consumption to a culture based on caretaking. What would a truly sustainable economy look like? What responsibilities do we bear for the well-being of future generations? What responsibilities do we bear toward Earth’s millions of other species? In a time of ecological calamity and widespread human suffering, how should we imagine a good life? A Conservationist Manifesto seeks answers to these pressing questions, and more, in writing that’s impelled by a sense of place and a sense of hope.

June Book of the Month

Hi all!

It's hard to believe that it's already June and Bridgewater BookFest is just three months away!

This month's selection for the BookFest Book Club is Sundown, Yellow Moon, the latest release from BookFest Featured Author Larry Watson. We hope that you'll join us to discuss this book at our next meeting on Friday, June 26, at Jeffries Landing in Bridgewater.

(Excerpt from Sundown, Yellow Moon by Larry Watson)

"On an icy day in January, 1961, in Bismarck, North Dakota, a sixteen-year-old boy walks home from high school with his best friend, Gene. The sudden sound of sirens startles and excites them, but they don't have long to wonder what the sound could mean. Soon after seeing police cars parked on their street, the boys learn the shocking truth: hours before, Gene's father, Raymond Stoddard, walked calmly and purposefully into the state capitol and shot to death a charismatic state senator. Raymond then drove home and hanged himself in his garage.

The horrific murder and suicide leave the community reeling. Speculation about Raymond's motives run rampant. Political scandal, workplace corruption, financial ruin, adultery, and jealousy are all cited as possible catalysts. But in the end, the truth behind the day's events died with those two men. And for Gene and his friend, the tragedy is a turning point, both in their lives and in their friendship.

Nearly forty years later, Gene's friend, a writer, revisits the tragedy and tries to unravel the mystery behind one man's inexplicable actions. Through his own recollections and his fiction--sometimes impossible to separate--he attempts to make sense of a senseless act and, in the process, to examine his youth, his friendship with Gene, and the love they both had for a beautiful girl named Marie.

Spare, haunting, lyrical, SUNDOWN, YELLOW MOON is a piercing study of love and betrayal, grief and desire, youth and remembrance. Using a brilliant evocative fiction-within-fiction structure, Larry Watson not only brings to life a distinct period in history but, most affectingly, reveals the interplay of memory, secrets, and the passage of time."

May's Book Club Selection: The River Wife

Just a little reminder that this month's selection is "The River Wife" - the newest release by BookFest featured author Jonis Agee. Copies are now available at Borders Booksellers at the Beaver Valley Mall.

Please join us on Friday, May 29, to discuss this wonderful new book.


(From Jonis Agee's website)

"From acclaimed novelist Jonis Agee, whom The New York Times Book Review called "a gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape," comes the sweeping story of four generations of women that unfolds along the current and the shores of the mighty Mississippi river.

In 1811, when a great earthquake rocks the peaceful cove of New Madrid, Missouri, Annie Lark finds herself pinned under the massive roof beam of her home. With little hope of freeing their trapped daughter, and the river rapidly rising, the family says a final, tearful goodbye and leaves the young woman to her fate. Within days, French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme, out scavenging nearby abandoned houses, rescues the girl from the brink of death and nurses her back to health. Soon, Annie learns to love this strong, brooding man and resolves to live out her life as his River Wife. Together they build a new community called "Jacques' Landing."

More than a century later, in 1930, Hedie Rails comes to Jacques' Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, a direct descendent of the fur trapper and river pirate. The young couple begins their life together in the very house Jacques built for Annie so long ago. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in Annie's old leather bound journals. But when the pages tell of sinister dealings and horrendous misunderstandings that spelled out tragedy for the rescued bride, Hedie fears that her own life is paralleling Annie's, and that history is repeating itself with Jacques' kin. But the journal entries do not end with Annie. Emerging from the pages are three other women who helped to shape Jacques Ducharme's life — Omah, the freed slave who joins his side as a river raider; his second wife, Laura; and their daughter, Maddie. Each relay the haunting tale of this enigmatic, industrious, and ultimately dangerous man, their stories weaving together with Hedie's, as the journals serve not only as a guide to the newest River Wife at Jacques' Landing, but also, perhaps, a warning.

Jonis Agee vividly portrays a lineage of love and heartbreak, passion and deceit against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century South. The five women of The River Wife come to discover that blind devotion cannot keep the truth at bay, nor the past from flowing into the present. "

Hi all! This month's BookFest Book Club meeting was another wonderful gathering, with plenty of scintillating discussion on Scott Russell Sanders' "Staying Put." It was a beautiful evening out on the deck of Jeffries Landing, and everyone had a great time!

This month's selection is "The River Wife" - the newest release by BookFest featured author Jonis Agee. Please join us on Friday, May 29, to discuss this wonderful new book.


(From Jonis Agee's website)

"From acclaimed novelist Jonis Agee, whom The New York Times Book Review called "a gifted poet of that dark lushness in the heart of the American landscape," comes the sweeping story of four generations of women that unfolds along the current and the shores of the mighty Mississippi river.

In 1811, when a great earthquake rocks the peaceful cove of New Madrid, Missouri, Annie Lark finds herself pinned under the massive roof beam of her home. With little hope of freeing their trapped daughter, and the river rapidly rising, the family says a final, tearful goodbye and leaves the young woman to her fate. Within days, French fur trapper Jacques Ducharme, out scavenging nearby abandoned houses, rescues the girl from the brink of death and nurses her back to health. Soon, Annie learns to love this strong, brooding man and resolves to live out her life as his River Wife. Together they build a new community called "Jacques' Landing."

More than a century later, in 1930, Hedie Rails comes to Jacques' Landing to marry Clement Ducharme, a direct descendent of the fur trapper and river pirate. The young couple begins their life together in the very house Jacques built for Annie so long ago. When, night after late night, mysterious phone calls take Clement from their home, a pregnant Hedie finds comfort in Annie's old leather bound journals. But when the pages tell of sinister dealings and horrendous misunderstandings that spelled out tragedy for the rescued bride, Hedie fears that her own life is paralleling Annie's, and that history is repeating itself with Jacques' kin. But the journal entries do not end with Annie. Emerging from the pages are three other women who helped to shape Jacques Ducharme's life — Omah, the freed slave who joins his side as a river raider; his second wife, Laura; and their daughter, Maddie. Each relay the haunting tale of this enigmatic, industrious, and ultimately dangerous man, their stories weaving together with Hedie's, as the journals serve not only as a guide to the newest River Wife at Jacques' Landing, but also, perhaps, a warning.

Jonis Agee vividly portrays a lineage of love and heartbreak, passion and deceit against the backdrop of the nineteenth-century South. The five women of The River Wife come to discover that blind devotion cannot keep the truth at bay, nor the past from flowing into the present. "