Words Bookstore in Maplewood has a stellar line-up of in-store author visits on tap next week. From Hemingway’s grandson to an award-winning sportswriter to a woman whose daughter’s premature birth set off a firestorm in the corporate world, there is something for everyone.
Green Hills of Africa: The Hemingway Library Edition, with introduction author Seán Hemingway
JULY 21 / TUE / 7:30 PM
Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway’s lyrical journal of a month on safari. Hemingway’s well-known interest in — and fascination with — big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip.
This new Hemingway Library Edition offers a fresh perspective on Hemingway’s classic travelogue with a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, the author’s sole surviving son, who, himself, spent many years as a professional hunter in East Africa; a new introduction by Seán Hemingway, grandson of the author; and published for the first time in its entirety the African journal of Hemingway’s wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, which provides new insight into the experiences that shaped her husband’s craft.
Girl in Glass, with author Deanna Fei
JULY 22 / WED / 7:30 PM
Deanna Fei was just five-and-a-half months pregnant when she inexplicably went into labor. Minutes later, she met her tiny baby who clung to life support inside a glass box.
A year after she brought her daughter home from the hospital, the CEO of AOL–her husband’s employer–blamed the beautiful, miraculously healthy little girl for a cut in employee benefits and attached a price tag to her life, using a phrase, “distressed babies,” that set off a national firestorm.
“Girl in Glass” is the riveting story of one child’s harrowing journey and a powerful distillation of parenthood. With incandescent prose and an unflinching eye, Fei explores the value of a human life: from the spreadsheets wielded by cost-cutting executives to the insidious notions of risk surrounding modern pregnancy; from the wondrous history of medical innovation in the care of premature infants to contemporary analyses of what their lives are worth; and finally, to the depths of her own struggle to make sense of her daughter’s arrival in the world. Above all, “Girl in Glass” is a luminous testament to how love takes hold when a birth defies our fundamental beliefs about how life is supposed to begin.
“Courageous … passionate … deeply moving.” – Andrew Solomon
“Deanna Fei has written three gripping tales in one–her transcendent journey as the mother of a child born way too soon; her plunge into the harsh realities of corporate greed and bumbling when a certain CEO publicly labeled her daughter a ‘distressed baby’; and her hard-won understanding of what society owes its most fragile beings. Readers will fall in love with Fei’s daughter, and come to see that she is all of our children.”
– Lisa Belkin, former NYT Motherlode blog columnist
The Pine Tar Game, with author Filip Bondy
JULY 23 / THU / 7:30 PM
Author Filip Bondy, an award-winning veteran sportswriter who personally covered the Pine Tar Game, looks back and explores one of the wackiest events in baseball history.
On July 24, 1983, during the finale of a heated four-game series between the dynastic New York Yankees and small-town Kansas City Royals, umpires nullified a go-ahead home run based on an obscure rule, when Yankees manager Billy Martin pointed out an illegal amount of pine tar–the sticky substance used for a better grip–on Royals third baseman George Brett’s bat. Brett wildly charged out of the dugout and chaos ensued. The call temporarily cost the Royals the game, but the decision was eventually overturned, resulting in a resumption of the game several weeks later that created its own hysteria.
Through this one fateful game, the ensuing protest, and ultimate fallout, The Pine Tar Game examines a more innocent time in professional sports, as well as the shifting tide that gave us today’s modern iteration of baseball.
