Laura Harrington

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome MIT professor and award-winning playwright LAURA HARRINGTON for a reading from her first novel, Alice Bliss.

When Alice learns that her father is being deployed to Iraq, she's heartbroken. Matt Bliss is leaving just as his daughter blossoms into a full-blown teenager. She will learn to drive, shop for a dress for her first dance, and fall in love all while trying to be strong for her mother and take care of her younger sister. Alice wears her dad's shirt every day, even though the scent of him is fading and his phone calls are never long enough. Life continues without him, but nothing can prepare Alice for the day two uniformed officers arrive at their door with news.

"Playwright and lyricist Harrington transforms her one-act musical Alice Unwrapped into a moving debut about loss and survival.... The playwright's facility with language is evident throughout: 'Maybe, she thinks, maybe he'll be home in time for cucumbers, and if not cucumbers, then for corn, and if not corn, then surely in time for tomatoes.' Though the fluid narration offers access to many characters, this is the story of Alice, her courage, fear, and optimism, and her heartbreaking discovery of the extent to which her father's life will shape and guide her own." —Publishers Weekly