The Promise of a Normal Life, with Rebecca Kaiser Gibson

Gibson's Bookstore, founded in 1898, is the oldest independent bookstore in New Hampshire, and is the largest independent bookstore in Northern New England.

Gibson's Bookstore

Virtual author event and book discussion.

Virtual author event!Gibson at Gibson's! The name is a happy accident, but we're thrilled to have an author alliteration. New Hampshire author Rebecca Kaiser Gibson (<a href="https://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/book/9780872333338" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Girl as Birch</a>) visits Gibson's Bookstore to present her new novel, <a href="https://www.gibsonsbookstore.com/book/9781956763331" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Promise of a Normal Life</a>.For readers of Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth Strout, and Katie Kitamura, the indelible journey of a quiet young woman—the “silent person” in the Seder—finding her way. Hailed as “radiant and transporting” (Margot Livesey), The Promise of a Normal Life is a poet’s debut novel, so evocative of life as lived that it transports you to a time and place you can practically see, touch, and feel. The unnamed narrator is a fiercely observant, introverted Jewish-American girl who seems to exist in a private and separate realm. She's the child of a first-generation doctor and lawyer—whose own stories have the loud grandeur of family legend—in an America where Jews are excluded from the country club across the street. Her expectations for adulthood are often contradictory. In the changing landscape of the 1960s, she attempts to find her way through the rituals of life, her geography expanding across the country, across the ocean, and into multiple nations. Along the way, she meets a glamorous hairdresser on a cruise ship to Israel, loopy tarot-card-reading passengers, and Alice-in-Wonderland lawyers in Haifa. There’s a blue-eyed all-American college boyfriend, a mystified tourist agent in the Lofoten Islands, a handsome eligible rabbi in LA, a righteous and self-absorbed MIT professor, and a clandestine, calculating lover in Boston. Eventually, she finds her own compass, but only after being swept to several distant shores by many winds.Sign up for the events-specific email newsletter from Gibson's Bookstore! Separate from our main store newsletter, this newsletter sends you notices when we book events, and what our upcoming events are! We promise not to sell your email address. <a href="https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1947324/1359315/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">https://signup.e2ma.net/signup/1947324/1359315/</a> Event harassment policyWe expect all participants to maintain an atmosphere of respect and fairness. Anyone who violates this standard of behavior, including engaging in any form of harassment, or otherwise disrupts the event, may, at the discretion of the organizers, be immediately removed. Participants removed as a result of their behavior will not receive any refund.

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The Promise of a Normal Life, with Rebecca Kaiser Gibson

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The Promise of a Normal Life, with Rebecca Kaiser Gibson

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