KENT—The next House of Books book club session will be held Wednesday, May 15, at 6 p.m. The group will discuss “Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather, with a new introduction by Claire Messud.
Cather was one of the most highly acclaimed novelists of the 20h century. She tells an epic story of a life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Fr. Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief.
In the almost 40 years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness.
On Sunday, May 19, at 4 p.m. the House of Books will host an author talk with Jack Viertel speaking about his book, “Broadway Melody.”
The book traces three lives through early ambitions and unlikely pathways that brought all of them to the same place at the same time—1960s Broadway. Laced with humor and sadness, portraits of historical characters from The Street and a long view of the rise, fall and revival of Times Square itself, “Broadway Melody” stitches three lives into the fabric of an endlessly compelling tale of the American theater.
The House of Books is located at 10 North Main St.; 860-927-4104; info@houseofbooksct.com.
