Milkweed Books presents Leslie Bazzett's book launch

Join Milkweed Books as we celebrate the newest novel by Leslie Bazzett. The author will be joined by local novelist Julie Schumacher. After a reading and conversation, there will be books for sale and signing.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A stylish, unsettling work of psychological suspense about an American woman, adrift in Mexico for a year, whose chance encounter with a glamorous older expat spirals into obsession and betrayal.

There’s no one, there’s only you.

When Sally, an American living in San Miguel de Allende, meets Louise outside her children’s school, she’s eager to immerse herself more deeply in the life of the city. In Mexico for just a year with her husband, an architect, Sally is entranced by Louise—her elegance, her harshness, her stories about Burroughs, Ginsberg, and Kerouac—and the two quickly become inseparable. Soon enough, Louise has begun calling her Mia and, at first playfully, then in earnest, introducing Sally as her daughter to a growing circle of friends.

By turns enthralled with the possibility of a new identity in Mexico and troubled by Louise’s magnetic hold over her, Sally attempts to keep the relationship a secret from her husband. As the specter of Sally’s troubled childhood looms, and Louise’s self-mythologizing tightens its grip, the two women test the limits of reinvention—until their fictions threaten the security of Sally’s flesh-and-blood family.

A taut, beguiling work of psychological suspense, Mia is a mother-daughter story turned on its head and a high-intensity fable about the limitations of playing a role that doesn’t belong to you.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Leslie Bazzett’s fiction debuted in the New England Review. Subsequent work has appeared in NER, Virginia Quarterly Review, Carolina Quarterly, West Branch, and The Louisville Review, among other places. One of her stories in NER received “Special Mention” in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and another was listed as “Notable” in The Best American Short Stories. She has been a finalist for a Rona Jaffe Award and a recipient of the NER Award for Emerging Writers. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, poet Michael Bazzett, and their two children. Mia is her debut novel.

Julie Schumacher is the author of eleven books, including the national bestseller Dear Committee Members, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Schumacher’s other works include two short story collections, a satirical coloring book, and five novels for young readers. Her essays and stories have appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Ms., The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and in The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Awards annual anthologies. She is a Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, where she has received multiple teaching awards and has been recognized as a Scholar of the College. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota.