Rowan Beaird TENDERNESS

July 22 | In-Store | 6:00 PM

Rowan Beaird, Tenderness

Join Chicagoland’s Rowan Beaird who will talk about her latest book, TENDERNESS (Flatiron Books), a “sly, elegant and menacing” (Megan Abbot) slow-burn mystery set in the 1970s during an island wedding, where the bride has recently left a sinister cult that might still be trailing her. Rowan will sign books following the talk.

Doors and minibar open at 5:30PM

Getting here: We are located at 1620 Orrington Avenue, in downtown Evanston, just one block east of the Davis Street Metra and CTA public transit stops. There is metered street parking as well as numerous parking garages nearby.

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About Rowan: Rowan Beaird is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The Common, among others. She is the recipient of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart. She has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and StoryStudio, and she currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her first novel, The Divorcées, was named a best book by Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, People, The Independent, and the Chicago Review of Books. 

About the book: Think Emma Cline’s The Girls meets Alison Espach’s The Wedding People set at a White Lotus resort. As author Emily Everett says: “Tenderness has the page-turning drive of a thoughtful thriller, but with the guts and heart of the best Ann Patchett family novels.”

The spawn for TENDERNESS came during the flurry of weddings Beaird attended in her early 30s. One stood out as it was clear–from the whisperings of family members on both sides–that no one wanted the bride and groom to be together. She began to think of weddings as a lit match. Everyone who has known or loved you in any or all of your iterations comes together in one room, with their own secrets and desires and grievances. The dramatic potential! Then she began to think about the character of a bride who had recently been through trauma, which led her to a cult she's long been fascinated with: Synanon, a prominent 20th-century drug rehabilitation organization that transformed into a violent, notorious cult.

An intoxicating thriller with gorgeous prose that wrings harsh beauty from its characters' pain, TENDERNESS excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets, and explores our long fascination with cults and their extreme, often terrifying, subversion of normal human needs for belonging, meaning, and structure. This taut, atmospheric novel set against the encroaching sea and the uneasy glow of privilege will have fans of Emma Cline, Liz Moore, and Sally Rooney swooning this summer.