PASADENA, Calif. – Author Janet Fitch will talk about her newly published book Chimes of a Lost Cathedral on Saturday, Sept. 14 at 3 p.m. in Pasadena Central Library’s Donald Wright Auditorium, 285 E. Walnut St.
The book concludes the epic story of Marina Makarova's (The Revolution of Marina M.) journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century---as a woman and an artist, entering her full power, passion and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.
After the events of The Revolution of Marina M., the young Marina Makarova finds herself on her own amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War--pregnant and adrift in the Russian countryside, forced onto her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child. She finds new strength and self-reliance to fortify her in her sojourn, and to prepare her for the hardships and dilemmas still to come.
When she finally returns to Petrograd, the city almost unrecognizable after two years of revolution, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, she finds the streets teeming with homeless children, victims of war. Now fully a woman, she takes on the challenge of caring for these civil war orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction. But despite the ordeal of war and revolution, betrayal and privation and unimaginable loss, Marina at last emerges as the poet she was always meant to be. Books will be available for sale and signing.
Janet Fitch was born and raised in Los Angeles, a third generation Angelino, who grew up in a family of voracious readers. She attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating with a degree in history, specializing in Russian Studies. Fitch attributes much of her storytelling ability to her training as an historian. She was a 2009 Likhachev fellow to St. Petersburg, Russia, a Helen R. Whiteley Fellow at the University of Washington Friday Harbor Labs, a research fellow at the Huntington Library, and a Moseley Fellow in Creative Writing at Pomona College. She is best known as the author of the Oprah's Book Club novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. Her novel Paint It Black, hit bestseller lists across the country and has also been made into a film.
For more information on this event, contact Christine Reeder at (626) 744-7076 or creeder@cityofpasadena.net.
NEWS MEDIA CONTACT:
Christine Reeder, Adult Services Librarian
(626) 744-7076, creeder@cityofpasadena.net
Catherine Haskett Hany, Communications
(626) 744-4207, chany@cityofpasadena.net