An Evening with Jessica Shattuck, Author of Last House

Meet New York Times bestselling author Jessica Shattuck. The author of the acclaimed historical fiction novel, The Women in the Castle, will discuss her new historical epic novel, Last House. She will appear in conversation with Alice Elliot Dark, author of Fellowship Point and Think of England.

Book sale and signing by Elm Street Books.

Registration required.

In Last House, it’s 1953, and for Nick Taylor, WWII veteran turned company lawyer, oil is the key to the future. Fast forward to 1968, and the country is on the brink of change. Protestors fill the streets to challenge everything from the Vietnam War and racism in the wake of MLK’s shooting to the country's reliance on Big Oil.

Spanning multiple generations and nearly eighty years, Last House tells the story of one American family during an age of grand ideals and even greater downfalls. Set against the backdrop of our nation’s history, this is an emotional tour de force that digs deeply into questions of inheritance and what we owe each other—and captures to stunning effect the gravity of time, the double edge of progress and the hubris of empire.

Jessica Shattuck is the author of the novels Last House; The Women in the Castle, a New York Times Bestseller and winner of The New England Book Award; Perfect Life; and The Hazards of Good Breeding, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a Boston Globe best book of the year, and a finalist for the 2003 PEN/Winship Award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Glamour, Open City and The Tampa Review, among other publications. Other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Mother Jones, Wired, The Believer and The Boston Globe.

Alice Elliot Dark's short story, In the Gloaming, was adapted into a film starring Glenn Close and Robert Sean Leonard in 1997. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and an Associate Professor in the English department and the MFA program at Rutgers University-Newark.