• St. Ivo

    by Joanna Hershon, Joanna Hershon Buckner
    Price $26.00

    Special Order
    Order
    St. Ivo
powered by Crowdcast
May 13, 2020

Joanna Hershon

Harvard Book Store welcomes JOANNA HERSHON—author of the novels The German Bride and A Dual Inheritance—for a discussion of her latest novel, St. Ivo. She will be joined in conversation by celebrated writer JOANNA RAKOFF.

Details

It’s the end of summer when we meet Sarah, the end of summer and the middle of her life, the middle of her career (she hopes it’s not the end), the middle of her marriage (recently repaired). And despite the years that have passed since she last saw her daughter, she is still very much in the middle of figuring out what happened to Leda, what role she played, and how she will let that loss affect the rest of her life.

Enter a mysterious stranger on a train, an older man taking the subway to Brooklyn who sees right into her.Then a mugging, her phone stolen, and with it any last connection to Leda. And then an invitation, friends from the past and a weekend in the country with their new, unexpected baby.

Over the course of three hot September days, the two couples try to reconnect. Events that have been set in motion, circumstances and feelings kept hidden, rise to the surface, forcing each to ask not just how they ended up where they are, but how they ended up who they are.

Unwinding like a suspense novel, Joanna Hershon's St. Ivo is a powerful investigation into the meaning of choice and family, whether we ever know the people closest to us, and how, when someone goes missing from our lives, we can ever let them go.

About Author(s)

Joanna Hershon is the author of the novels SwimmingThe Outside of AugustThe German Bride, and A Dual Inheritance. Her writing has appeared in Grantathe New York TimesOne StoryVirginia Quarterly Review, and two literary anthologies, Brooklyn Was Mine and Freud’s Blind Spot. She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Creative Writing Department at Columbia University.

Joanna Rakoff is the author of the memoir, My Salinger Year, and the novel, A Fortunate Age. She has written for the New York Timesthe Los Angeles TimesVogue, and other publications. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.