A Literary Cocktail Hour with Author, Jonathan Evison

Past event
Feb 11, 2022, 5 to 6 PM

The Brattleboro Literary Festival invites you to join us on Friday, February 11, 2022, at 5:00 PM, featuring award-winning, NYT best-selling author Jonathan Evison to discuss his 2021 book, "Small World."

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7816442811527/WN_02Is-ZQ_S36jEHQlzggFfg

In the July 1845 issue of the Democratic Review, an editorial urged "the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." It's believed to be the first time the expression "manifest destiny," a staple of high school history papers for over a century, ever appeared in print. The phrase doesn't show up as such in Jonathan Evison's epic seventh novel, Small World, but its presence—and its role within American immigrants' and Native Americans' destinies, spread across three centuries—is woven into every page. Small World, opens with a train accident and reveals the connections among a host of people across race, class, history, and the country in this historical epic with a Dickensian flair.

In exploring the passengers' lives and those of their ancestors more than a century before, Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from numerous points of view across place and time. Evison suggests a fresh way of recognizing our relationships without melting-pot clichés. And it hits home as it probes at our country's injustices, big and small, straight through to its deeply satisfying final words.

Jonathan's book, "Lawn Boy," was a focal point of the recent spate of book banning in the United States. The book was removed from libraries by school boards in Leander, Texas, where police were asked to respond, and in Fairfax County, Virginia. The book was returned to the shelves in Virginia. According to the American Library Association, which tracks book challenges, there was an unprecedented 330 reports of challenges to books in 2020.

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