Parnassus Books welcomes award-winning, bestselling authors Paula McLain and Charles Frazier for a discussion and signing of their new books, Love and Ruin and Varina, as part of our Salon@615 speaker series. This event will take place at the Nashville Public Library. Tickets are not required to attend, but you can reserve your seat for free three weeks in advance by registering to attend the event. CHECK BACK as this page will be updated with the ticketing link as it becomes available. Approximately 100 auditorium tickets will be available on-site the day of the event.
Event Guidelines
This event is free and open to the public. In order to join the signing line and have any books signed at this event, you must purchase a copy of either Love and Ruin or Varina from Parnassus Books either in-store, over the phone, or online. Your purchase will include a signing line ticket that will serve as your admission into the signing line. As a Salon@615 patron, you will receive 10% off your purchase of either book.
More about Love and Ruin
In 1937, twenty-eight-year-old Martha Gellhorn travels alone to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War and becomes drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in devastating conflict. She also finds herself unexpectedly—and uncontrollably—falling in love with Hemingway, a man already on his way to becoming a legend. In the shadow of the impending Second World War, and set against the tumultuous backdrops of Madrid, Finland, China, Key West, and especially Cuba, where Martha and Ernest make their home, their relationship and professional careers ignite. But when Ernest publishes the biggest literary success of his career, For Whom the Bell Tolls, they are no longer equals, and Martha must make a choice: surrender to the confining demands of being a famous man’s wife or risk losing Ernest by forging a path as her own woman and writer. It is a dilemma that will force her to break his heart, and her own.
Paula McLain was born in Fresno, California in 1965. She is the author of The Paris Wife, and Circling the Sun, New York Times and international bestsellers. The recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Cleveland Arts Prize, the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, she is also the author of two collections of poetry; a memoir, Like Family, Growing up in Other People’s Houses; and a first novel, A Ticket to Ride. She lives with her family in Cleveland.
More about Varina
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a Mississippi landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history—culpable regardless of her intentions. The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives with "bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit." Intimate in its detailed observations of one woman's tragic life and epic in its scope and power, Varina is a novel of an American war and its aftermath. Ultimately, the book is a portrait of a woman who comes to realize that complicity carries consequences.
Charles Frazier is the author of Cold Mountain, an international bestseller that won the National Book Award and was adapted into an Academy-Award winning film by Anthony Minghella. He is also the author of the bestselling novels Thirteen Moons and Nightwoods.
More about Salon@615
Salon@615 presents bestselling authors free to the public through a unique partnership between the Nashville Public Library, The Nashville Public Library Foundation, Humanities Tennesse, BookPage magazine, and Parnassus Books. Together, we nurture and celebrate the literary life of Nashville by presenting author events and book signings to our community. Since its inception in early 2011, Salon@615 has become a regular and vital author reading series on Nashville's cultural calendar.
