Alice Hoffman at the Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum and Harvard Book Store welcome ALICE HOFFMAN—New York Times bestselling author of the Practical Magic series—for a discussion of her new novel The Invisible Hour. She will be joined in conversation by Boston author ALEXANDRA MARSHALL. A pre-reception will begin at 6:30pm. The conversation will begin at 7:30pm. 

Ticketing

Tickets for this event are available through the Boston Athenaeum website. If you have any questions about tickets, venue accessibility, or accessing the event virtually, please contact the Boston Athenaeum at events@bostonathenaeum.org. Books will be available for purchase at the event. 

Tickets to the in-person event are SOLD OUT. CLICK HERE for tickets to access the event virtually on Zoom. 

There are six ticket options available for this event.

In-Person Tickets

1. Member Ticket: This ticket is $10.00 and includes admission for one Boston Athenaeum with a Member ID.
2. Member Guest Ticket:  This ticket is $5.00 and includes admission for one Guest of Boston Athenaeum Members with a Member ID.
3. Visitor Ticket: This ticket is $15.00 and includes admission for one non-Boston Athenaeum member. 

Virtual Tickets

1. Member Ticket: This ticket is $5.00 for Boston Athenaeum members with a Member ID and includes a link to view the event virtually on Zoom.
2. Member Guest Ticket: This ticket is $5.00 for Guests of Boston Athenaeum Members with a Member ID and includes a link to view the event virtually on Zoom.
3. Visitor Ticket: This ticket is $10.00 for non-Boston Athenaeum members and includes a link to view the event virtually on Zoom.  

About The Invisible Hour

One brilliant June day when Mia Jacob can no longer see a way to survive, the power of words saves her. The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier, but it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—an oppressive cult in western Massachusetts where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Through a journey of heartbreak, love, and time, Mia must abandon the rules she was raised with at the Community. As she does, she realizes that reading can transport you to other worlds or bring them to you, and that readers and writers affect one another in mysterious ways. She learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine, and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die?

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

This is the story of one woman’s dream. For a little while it came true.

Praise for The Invisible Hour

"I was immediately immersed in The Invisible Hour. It’s a wonderful story of love and growth, but it’s also a narrative engine of great power. Alice Hoffman is wonderful on stories and writing." —Stephen King, New York Times bestselling author of Fairytale

"What a thrill to discover Nathaniel Hawthorne in the pages of Alice Hoffman’s exquisite new novel, The Invisible Hour! And what delight to experience the melding, across the centuries, of two prodigious American literary imaginations—Hoffman’s and Hawthorne’s—in this redemptive tale of daughters and mothers and one true love for a man and his book." —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Peabody Sisters, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast

"Alice Hoffman's The Invisible Hour is a rich, immersive, magical reading experience. This beautiful novel is about the stories women tell each other and the ones that save us, about the price and peril of motherhood, and the difficulties women have faced throughout history in controlling their own fates. Alice Hoffman, the reigning queen of magical realism, takes her readers on a fantastic, mystical journey that celebrates the joy and power of reading and dares to believe in the impossible." —Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Four Winds