Byrd’s Books will host Connecticut author Nan Rossiter on Sunday, June 3rd at 1:00 p.m. to discuss her recent book Words Get In the Way and her brand-new book The Fo’c'sle.
From the author of The Gin & Chowder Club comes an exquisitely heartfelt and uplifting novel that explores the infinite reach of a mother’s love—and the gift of second chances…
The modest ranch house where Callie Wyeth grew up looks just as she remembers it—right down to the well-worn sheets in the linen closet. But in the years since Callie lived here, almost everything else has changed. Her father, once indomitable, is in poor health. And Callie is a single mother with a beautiful little boy, Henry, who has just been diagnosed with autism.
Returning to this quiet New Hampshire community seems the best thing to do, for both her father and her son’s sake. Even if it means facing Linden Finch, the one she loved and left for reasons she’s sure he’ll never forgive. Linden is stunned that Callie is back—and that she has a son. Yet in the warm, funny relationship that develops between Henry and Linden’s menagerie of rescued farm animals, Callie begins to find hope. Not just that her son might break through the wall of silence separating him from the world, but that she too can make a new start amid the places and people that have never left her heart…
Most adults know, and many have read, Henry Beston’s beloved account of the year he spent in a shack high on a dune overlooking the thundering surf of the Atlantic. Here, on the outer forearm of Cape Cod, looking un interrupted due east to Portugal, he made a life in a 16 x 20′ shack, simply furnished with a kitchen, a bed, a chest of drawers, a writing table, and a few chairs. He lived there, alone, through the changing seasons, the migration of birds, the howling of the winter storms, the occasional visits of surfmen from nearby Nauset Station, and the turning of the stars in the night sky. During the days, he would wander along the beach, take notes, and think. At dusk he would come home to write by lanternlight. The result was his immortal record of that year on the Nauset dunes, The Outermost House. The house was known as “The Fo’c'sle.”
Now we have a record of that year for younger readers, brilliantly retold and illustrated by Nan Parson Rossiter. Her artwork glows with the same inner light and simplicity that animated Beston’s prose and amplified the natural world. And although his memorable prose is incorporated throughout the book, it is Rossiter’s skill, as both an artist and an interpreter, that makes him, his year, and the little shack he so loved come convincingly, and poignantly, to life.
Registration is suggested for this author event. You can register to attend by calling (203) 730-2973, or by email at events@ByrdsBooks.com.
