Wednesday, 7:00 pm EDT May 15, 2024
The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed
Acclaimed author Tessa Fontaine joins The Center for Fiction to celebrate her debut novel The Red Grove. After the success of her memoir The Electric Woman, Fontaine returns with a thrilling and eerie mystery that explores violence and the lengths we go to protect ourselves. The novel follows Luce as she tries to uncover the disappearance of her mother from the Red Grove, the hidden commune they live in that is said to protect any woman from harm. As Luce digs deeper into the rituals and myths of the community she grew up in, she learns that not everything is as it seems. Ambitious and inventive, Fontaine is “ferocious in every line” as she conjures this haunting tale of love and the price of safety. Joining Fontaine in conversation is Julia Phillips, bestselling author and National Book Award finalist for Disappearing Earth. Fontaine and Phillips will discuss The Red Grove and its intergenerational story of violence and hope. After the conversation, Fontaine will sign books.
In Conversation
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Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine
Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers choice, and a best book of the year by Southern Living, Amazon, Refinery29, and the New York Post. Her writing can be found in Outside, Glamour, AGNI, and The Believer. She has been a sideshow performer, a shoe saleswoman, and a professor, and she taught for years in jails and prisons. She cofounded and runs the Accountability Workshop with the writer Annie Hartnett. Raised among the redwoods of Northern California, she now lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, goofy dog, and sassy cat.
Photo Credit: Claire Marika
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Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips is the bestselling author of the novel Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. Her second novel, Bear, will be published in June.
Featured Book
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The Red Grove
By Tessa Fontaine
Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux
The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by the community’s founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions who stalk the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its people. Some say the mighty redwoods keep them safe.
Yet Luce’s mother, Gloria, has gone missing. A man came seeking answers among the Red Grove’s mysteries—a connection to the beyond—and died. And then Gloria vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is devoted to its mission, its rituals and myths. But she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave her little brother, Roo, and especially their aunt Gem, whose care in that suspended state of everdream depends on Gloria in every way. But as Luce tries to figure out what has happened to her mother, she discovers that this special place is not what it seems and that protection comes at a cost.
The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine’s The Red Grove is an exploration of the legacies of violence, the price of safety, and the choices we make to protect what we love.