DC Reads is back with three exciting DMV area authors who are sharing their newest work with the DC Public Library community. In partnership with the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, you are invited to read and discuss these exciting titles at three city-wide virtual book clubs and special opportunities to engage with each author culminating in a panel conversation with all three authors at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in March. You will be able to check out each of the books with your library card or look for giveaway copies of the book at your neighborhood library courtesy of the DC Public Library Foundation starting in January.
Upcoming Events
Find All Upcoming DC Reads Events
January | "Absolution," by Alice McDermott
About the Book | In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer "on loan" to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the "wretchedness" she sees all around her. When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost. Sixty years later, Charlene's daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon, they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped and stunted by Charlene's pursuit of "inconsequential good."
About the Author | Alice McDermott was born in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of eight previous novels, including Charming Billy, winner of the National Book Award, and That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This, which were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of the essay collection What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Mademoiselle and Seventeen. She has taught at UCSD and American University and she is currently the Richard A. Macksey professor of the Humanities at John Hopkins University. McDermott lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband, a retired neuroscientist, and has three adult children.
Check out other books by Alice McDermott
Discussion Questions
-
Absolution tells a Vietnam War story from the point of view of American military wives. What did you know about this time period going into the novel? How did it expand your understanding of what it meant to be a woman at that time?
-
Discuss the differences between Tricia and Charlene. How did you relate to these two women — and the novel’s portrayal of female friendships?
-
The story is framed as a call and response, with Rainey invoking Tricia’s memories through an extended correspondence. How did the book’s structure impact your experience as a reader?
-
How do Tricia, Charlene, and Rainey navigate what it means to “do good” in a world with such atrocities?
-
In an interview with Diane Rehm, McDermott describes the act of absolving someone as “the most human of interactions.” What does it mean to be absolved? What does the book title mean to you?
Absolution Read-Alikes
February | "When She Left," by E.A. Aymar
About the Book | A young couple fleeing a criminal family confronts a reluctant assassin in this heart-pounding thriller from E.A. Aymar.
When Melissa Cruz falls hard for a dreamy-eyed photographer named Jake, she can't resist the urge to run away with him. The problem is that she already has a boyfriend, a rising star in his family's crime organization. Betrayed and humiliated, Chris isn't going to just let her go.
To find Melissa, Chris turns to Lucky Wilson, one of his family's professional assassins. But Lucky has his own problems. After years of lying about his day job, his marriage is in shambles and he suffers from relentless panic attacks. He'll do this job if Chris will let him out of the killing life.
Lucky knows this is his best chance at salvaging the home life he always craved. But Melissa and Jake aren't going to abandon their chance at something real--something they've both been lacking in their lives. But they aren't the only ones desperate to survive, and a powerful criminal family isn't the only danger.
And soon, it's clear that an unlikely partnership might be the only way for any of them to make it out alive...
About the Author | Anthony Award-nominated E.A. Aymar’s new thriller, NO HOME FOR KILLERS, was published February 1, 2023 by Thomas and Mercer. His last book, THEY’RE GONE, was published in 2020 to rave reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus (starred), and was named one of the best books of 2020 by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. His 2019 thriller, THE UNREPENTANT, received similar critical enthusiasm, was a finalist for numerous awards, and was an Amazon bestseller.
Ed’s column, “Decisions and Revisions,” appears monthly in the Washington Independent Review of Books, and he runs the Noir at the Bar series for Washington, D.C. He is a former member of the national board of International Thriller Writers and, for years, was the managing editor of The Thrill Begins, an online resource for debut and aspiring writers. He is an active member of Crime Writers of Color, the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Ed has hosted and spoken at a variety of crime fiction, writing, and publishing events nationwide.
He was born in Panama and now lives and writes in, and generally about, the D.C./MD/VA triangle.
Check out other books by E.A. Aymar
March | "Casualties of Truth," by Lauren Francis-Sharma
About the Book | Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, D.C.; and the former glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son, Roland. When she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis's new colleagues on a stormy summer evening filled with startling and unwelcome interruptions, Prudence has little reason to think that certain details of her history might arise sometime between cocktails and the appetizer course.
Yet when Davis's colleague turns out to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence's past, she is transported back to the formative months she spent as a law student in South Africa in 1996. As an intern at a Johannesburg law firm, Prudence attended sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that uncovered the many horrors and human rights abuses of the Apartheid state, and which fundamentally shaped her sense of righteousness and justice. Prudence experienced personal horrors in South Africa as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light. When Matshediso finally reveals the real reason behind his sudden reappearance, he will force Prudence to examine her most deeply held beliefs and to excavate inner reserves of resilience and strength.
Lauren Francis-Sharma's previous two novels have established her as a deft chronicler of history and its intersections with flawed humans struggling to find peace in unjust circumstances. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.
Put "Casualties of Truth" on Hold
About the Author | Lauren, a child of Trinidadian immigrants, has written about the Caribbean in both of her critically-acclaimed novels, “’Til the Well Runs Dry” and “Book of the Little Axe.”
Lauren holds a degree in English Literature with a minor in African-American Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Lauren, a book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle and a MacDowell Fellow, is also the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.
Check out other books by Lauren Francis-Sharma
An Evening of DC Literary Voices
DC Reads 2025 Culminating Panel
Thursday, March 20 at 7 p.m. | Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library
To culminate DC Reads, join the Library and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation for a final conversation with our three featured authors.
This panel will bring together DC writers Lauren Francis-Sharma, E.A. Aymar, and Alice McDermott with moderator Hannah Oliver Depp for a conversation about their books, being a writer in DC, and more. The event will include a Q&A with the audience, and the Library will provide ASL interpretation.
DC Reads is Made Possible By
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation champions the breadth and power of fiction in America.