Events

Wed 4/28  7pm Kim Wright reads from her novel Love In Midair A chance encounter with a stranger sends Elyse Bearden into an emotional tailspin. Suddenly, she is willing to risk everything: her safe but stale marriage, her seemingly perfect life, and her position in the church. It will take an extraordinary leap of faith for Elyse to find her own path to happiness. Kim says of her book: When I got divorced twelve years ago, two weird things happened. First of all, women started spontaneously telling me their bad marriage stories, even women who I thought were perfectly happy. If you get divorced in a small town, you’ve screwed up in a very public way. All of a sudden you become the person it’s okay to confess to and women were practically flagging me down in the supermarket, leaning over my cart and saying “You know, things aren’t that great at home….” I became the repository of a hundred women’s secrets, and the notes I kept from that period became the basis of Love in Mid Air. The stories were altered, of course, a loose amalgamation of what was happening to me and my friends.   The other thing I realized is that there were very few books that dealt with the subject of divorce in a realistic manner. Most of the books were about men leaving women, even though it’s more statistically likely for a woman to initiate divorce, especially after the age of 40. And there was often some sort of quick fix – the deserted woman ended up falling in love with her attorney or some hunky handyman who showed up to help at her new house. I resented this whole idea that divorce is about swapping one man for another – ideally as fast as possible – with little exploration of the affect a woman’s divorce has on her friends and the whole social web. I knew that needed to make it into the story as well. “Wright understands female friendships, the interplay of love and envy, the way one woman’s change of fortune can threaten the group’s equilibrium.  Astute and engrossing, this review is a treat.”  People Magazine (3 ½ stars) Kim Wright has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years and is a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Writing.