PORT HADLOCK — When a library director loves the book she’s reading — a story intertwining the lives of a young house slave in 1852 and a modern-day lawyer — she can try inviting the author to present at her library.
That author is Tara Conklin, and her book is The House Girl, a New York Times best-seller.
The library director is Meredith Wagner, and she’s about to welcome Conklin to the Jefferson County Library for a free talk today at 6:30 p.m.
Conklin has lived many places in England and the United States, but when she moved to the Pacific Northwest, this place felt exactly right.
A ‘calling’
“In Seattle, I found the space, time and community to dedicate myself to my writing project, which I began calling by its true name: a novel,” she wrote in a recent blog post.
“I also found my missing character — that tickle that wouldn’t let me rest,” Conklin added.
“Her name is Lina Sparrow, and her story became the piece that allowed me to complete my first novel, The House Girl, published in hardcover in February 2013.”
In a starred Library Journal review, one book critic called the story “guaranteed to keep readers up long past their bedtimes.”
The House Girl, this critic gushed, is “a seamless juxtaposition of past and present, of the lives of two women, and of the redemptive nature of art and the search for truth and justice.”
Conklin was born on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands and raised in Stockbridge, Mass.
She is a graduate of Yale University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and New York University School of Law.
A joint U.S.-U.K. citizen, Tara now lives with her family in Seattle.
For more about Conklin’s talk at the library, 620 Cedar Ave., visit www.jclibrary.info or phone 360-385-6544.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
