The Bookplate is continuing their 2024 season of author lectures on July 10th with local author Jamie Kirkpatrick. He will be reading selections of his newest novel and fielding questions during a 6pm Wednesday event at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial in Chestertown.
“The Tales of Bismuth” is the sequel to Jamie Kirkpatrick’s debut novel, “This Salted Soil”. In that novel, Kirkpatrick introduced readers to Declan Shaw, a young Irish journalist who is based in Tunisia and assigned to cover the Allied North African campaign against Nazi Germany in 1942-1943.
Upon completion of that journalistic assignment, Shaw travels first to Hungary and then on to Palestine to cover events unfolding there. He arrives in Jerusalem during the waning days of the British Mandate, and begins to navigate the complexities of life in Palestine–the complexities of the relationships between Palestinians and Jews, as well as the complexities of the heart. In the midst of swirling events and emotions, Shaw strives to report on the conflict as a neutral observer, an almost impossible perspective given the entangled story of two peoples who claim one land. The novel ends with the onset of what Israelis call the War of Independence and what Palestinians refer to as their nakba, their “Catastrophe.” This is readable history, an engrossing story of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His previous novel, “This Salted Soil,” a fictionalized account of the North African campaign in World War II, is also available at The Bookplate. For the past eight years, Jamie has written a weekly column for three online newspapers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Two collections of these essays, “Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”, are also available at The Bookplate and online. Jamie and his wife Kat Conley maintain homes in Bethesda and Chestertown. His website is www.musingjamie.net.
For more event details, contact The Bookplate at 410-778-4167 or contact@thebookplate.net. These events are free and open to the public. The Kitchen at the Imperial is located at 208 High Street in Chestertown, Maryland. The Bookplate will continue their event series with husband and wife author/journalist team Karen Tumulty & Paul Richter on Wednesday, July 31st at The Kitchen and Pub at The Imperial.
