Bank Square Books and Savoy Bookshop & Café present an author talk and Q&A with Donna Freitas for the release of her debut adult novel, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano. Donna will be in conversation with author and editor, Jill Santopolo.
This event is free, but registration is required. Registration details are at the bottom of this page.
About the Book
A deeply moving novel about a woman who thought she never wanted to be a mother--and the many ways that life can surprise us
In every woman there are many stories . . .
Rose Napolitano is fighting with her husband, Luke, about prenatal vitamins. She promised she'd take them, but didn't. He promised before they got married that he'd never want children, but now he's changed his mind. Their marriage has come to rest on this one question: Can Rose find it in herself to become a mother? Rose is a successful professor and academic. She's never wanted to have a child. The fight ends, and with it their marriage.
But then, Rose has a fight with Luke about the vitamins--again. This time the fight goes slightly differently, and so does Rose's future as she grapples with whether she can indeed give up the one thing she thought she knew about herself. Can she reimagine her life in a completely new way? That reimagining plays out again and again in each of Rose's nine lives, just as it does for each of us as we grow into adulthood. What are the consequences of our biggest choices? How would life change if we let go of our preconceived ideas of ourselves and became someone completely new? Rose Napolitano's experience of choosing and then choosing again shows us in an utterly compelling way what it means, literally, to reinvent a life and, sometimes, become a different kind of woman than we ever imagined.
A stunning novel about love, loss, betrayal, divorce, death, a woman's career and her identity, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano is about finding one's way into a future that wasn't the future one planned, and the ways that fate intercedes when we least expect it.
About Donna Freitas
This is Donna Freitas's first adult novel. She has spoken at nearly two hundred colleges and universities about her nonfiction work. She is the author of Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention, as well as ten novels for children and young adults. Donna has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe, and she has appeared on radio and television, from NPR's All Things Considered to The Today Show. She has been a professor at Boston University and Hofstra University, and is currently a member of the faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University's MFA program.
About Jill Santopolo
Jill Santopolo received a BA in English literature from Columbia University and an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's the author of three successful children's and young-adult series and works as the Associate Publisher of Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. Santopolo travels the world to speak about writing and storytelling. She is the New York Times bestselling author of More Than Words and The Light We Lost, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. She lives in New York City.
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“A powerful exploration of motherhood and feminism… this novel will have readers examining their own ‘what-ifs.’” — Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author of Everything After
“[An] inventive novel about love, loss, identity, and compromise.”—Woman's Day