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On May 19 Bookworks (4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW) welcomes novelist Eileen Garvin to host an in-person book club meeting featuring her second novel, Crow Talk, which was published late last April. Literature lovers are invited to relish in this story about a murder. But her newest venture isn’t a true crime expose or a whodunit – it’s the story of a feathered intermediary and his human caretakers launching into an interspecies healing journey. Although Crow Talk is set in a fictional place, Garvin says the setting is what came to her first — manifested through her visceral connection to the trees and birds of the Pacific Northwest and a memory of a real-life lakeside location in Idaho.
“I thought, ‘How could I create a setting that would comfort my characters in the same way that I felt comfort from this beloved place?’” she says. “It’s really a mash-up of my feelings and memories of childhood — and this place where I live now, and trying to create a fictional location that would comprise all those things.”
Garvin is literarily, scholarly and professionally connected to the Duke City. In the late ‘90s she attended grad school at UNM, studying English Language and Literature. During her time here, she worked as managing editor at New Mexico Business Weekly.
“There’s a piece of me that’s still there, and some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my life are still there. So [New Mexico] has a really big place in my heart, and I’m always so happy to be able to go back and keep those connections alive,” she says. “It took me a long time to get over leaving New Mexico. There’s a really strong tug back, and I’m happy I get to return.”
Crow Talk explores the relationship between a young bird expert named Frankie and Anne, an Irish musician coping with the sudden muteness of her 5-year-old autistic son, Aiden. The three form a bond over an injured baby crow, and the friendship provides the means for everyone involved to mend their wounds in the safety of a natural landscape that feels universal. Similar to Garvin’s autobiography How to Be a Sister, which discusses her experiences growing up with a sibling whose autism sometimes made communication difficult, her characterization of Aiden and Anne’s relationship in Crow Talk is honest and authentic. The novel is full of amazing and sometimes quirky scientific tidbits about its cunning corvid characters as well.
The Bookworks Book Club event offers attendees a more casual and personal interaction with Garvin than they might get from a typical Q+A or book signing. Garvin says she will likely speak a bit about the origin of the book and then open the floor to questions, round-robin-style. It’s also a chance to hang out with your book buddies and chat about a novel celebrating the transformative power of chance friendships.
“Readers always see something different in a book,” Garvin says. “I’m always fascinated to see what people pick up on or what their life experience has led them to see in a story that I wouldn’t have necessarily found there.”
Don’t be the person who shows up to the book club without reading the novel — even though Garvin says it’s perfectly okay with her — you have plenty of time to finish the book before Monday. Even if you don’t, it’s a book club, not everyone is there strictly for the juicy storyline. Garvin says there is more to take away from the experience.
“I always encourage people to ask questions about the writing process and publishing, because there is a lot of mystery surrounding how it all works — how you get an agent and all that business,” she says. “I wouldn’t say that people have to have read the book to come to the book club. And it’s free, which is so great. I love that about bookstores, they’re providing this wonderful opportunity for people to get together and have a conversation. You get to just show up and talk.”
For more info about the event or to RSVP visit the Bookworks website here.
Bookworks Book Club: Eileen Garvin
May 19, 6 p.m.
Bookworks
4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW
Free