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Joyce Maynard in Conversation With Laura Stanfill

  • Powell's City of Books 1005 West Burnside Street Portland, OR, 97209 United States (map)

From bestselling author Joyce Maynard comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up to her beloved novel Count the Ways — a complex story of three generations of a family and its remarkable, resilient, indomitable matriarch, Eleanor.

Following the death of her former husband, Cam, 54-year-old Eleanor has moved back to the New Hampshire farm where they raised three children to care for their brain-injured son, Toby, now an adult. Toby's older brother, Al, is married and living in Seattle with his wife; their sister, Ursula, lives in Vermont with her husband and two children. Although all appears stable, old resentments, anger, and bitterness simmer just beneath the surface.

How the Light Gets In (William Morrow) follows Eleanor and her family through fifteen years (2010 to 2024) as their story plays out against a uniquely American backdrop and the events that transform their world (climate change, the January 6th insurrection, school violence) and shape their lives (later-life love, parental alienation, steadfast friendship). With her trademark sensitivity and insight, Maynard paints an indelible portrait of characters both familiar and new making their way over rough, messy, and treacherous terrain to find their way to what is, for each, a place to call "home."

Maynard will be joined in conversation by Laura Stanfill, publisher of Forest Avenue Press and author of Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary.