Elizabeth Weiss presents The Sisters Sweet

Magers & Quinn Booksellers

Elizabeth Weiss presents The Sisters Sweet, in conversation with Maggie Shipstead

A young woman in a vaudeville sister act must learn to forge her own path after her twin runs away to Hollywood in this richly immersive debut about love, family, and friendship. “A beautifully told coming-of-age story that embraces life with a galloping energy and irresistible curiosity.”—Maggie Shipstead, New York Times bestselling author of Great CircleLeaving was my sister’s choice. I would have to make my own. All Harriet Szász has ever known is life onstage with her sister, Josie. As “The Sisters Sweet,” they pose as conjoined twins in a vaudeville act conceived of by their ambitious parents, who were once themselves theatrical stars. But after Josie exposes the family’s fraud and runs away to Hollywood, Harriet must learn to live out of the spotlight—and her sister’s shadow. As Josie’s star rises in California, the Szászes fall on hard times. Striving to keep her struggling family afloat, Harriet molds herself into the perfect daughter. She also tentatively forms her first relationships outside her family and begins to imagine a life for herself beyond the role of dutiful daughter that she has played for so long. Finally, Harriet must decide whether to honor her mother, her father, or the self she’s only beginning to get to know. Full of long-simmering tensions, buried secrets, questionable saviors, and broken promises, this is a story about how much we are beholden to others and what we owe ourselves. Layered and intimate, The Sisters Sweet heralds the arrival of an accomplished new voice in fiction.Elizabeth Weiss earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers&#x27; Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her nonfiction has been published in The New Yorker online. She has taught for the University of Iowa, the Iowa Young Writers&#x27; Studio, and the Sackett Street Writers&#x27; Workshop, and is a mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She lives in Minneapolis with her spouse, daughter, and dog.Maggie Shipstead is the New York Times-bestselling author of the novels Great Circle, a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize; Astonish Me; and Seating Arrangements, which won the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A frequent contributor to travel magazines, she is often away from her home in Los Angeles.

Elizabeth Weiss presents The Sisters Sweet

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Elizabeth Weiss presents The Sisters Sweet

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