The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka) is excited to host an evening with bestselling author Mary Morris on Thursday, May 22 at 6:30 pm to discuss her new book, The Red House. The award-winning novelist weaves together an unsolved family mystery, a poignant coming-of-age story, and a little-known corner of World War II history in this lyrical novel of family, loss and, ultimately, love. Ms. Morris will be in-conversation with Mary Webber O'Malley.
 
This event is free with registration. To register, please CLICK HERE. 
 
More About the Book: Thirty years ago, Laura's mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her jewelry, her strangely compelling paintings, and her insulin. Viola never returned, and her family never recovered. Decades later, at a crossroads in her marriage, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II and where Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood, in an attempt to uncover the past her mother refused to speak about after the family moved to New Jersey and settled into the American dream.
 
As Laura retraces her mother's path from her girlhood in Turin to war-torn Naples, following the few puzzle pieces she has to go on, she uncovers fragments of Viola's story which interweave with Laura's own investigation. As Laura reconnects with old neighbors and her mother's wartime compatriots, she uncovers a shadowy local legend in her search for answers: the Red House, one of Italy's Jewish internment camps, where Viola spent part of the war, and which become the repeat subject of her most arresting paintings. Mary Morris brings a family and a forgotten moment in history to vivid life with thought-provoking, sensitively wrought prose, as seen through Laura and Viola's eyes.
 
Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author, says, "You know, when you read Mary Morris, that you will get exquisite writing and vibrant world-building and people that break your heart. But The Red House is even more unforgettable - a mystery of time, place, and character that reveals how the gaps in our personal histories are the ones that somehow become the building blocks of our lives." 
 
More About the Author: Mary Morris is the author of numerous works of fiction, including the novels Gateway to the Moon, The Jazz Palace, A Mother's Love, and House Arrest, and of nonfiction, including the travel classic Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone. Morris is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature and the 2016 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
 
More About Our Conversation Partner: Mary Webber O'Malley is a Virtual Bookseller for Skylark Bookshop and Host, Author Liaison and Scheduling Producer for A Mighty Blaze. She also works for the book industry nonprofit Binc, and is a frequent book reviewer, blurber, and writer. When she is not writing, reading, reviewing, and blurbing books, she is tending to her little suburban homestead outside Chicago, where she and her husband live with a small menagerie of animals.