Bay Area Friends, one week from today, on Thursday, July 16th at 7:30 pm, I’m in conversation with Janis Cooke Newman at The Booksmith, San Francisco, to discuss her tender, imaginative, and gripping new novel, A Master Plan for Rescue.
Already, BBC named the novel a Top-Ten Summer Read and it made Vanity Fair’s Hot Picks list. A Master Plan for Rescue publishes on July 14 from Riverhead Books. I look forward to a truly special evening next Thursday when Janis and I will chat about this novel in particular (both its content and its crafting), and the writing life in general. I’ll also be asking just how valuable are books in the modern era, anyway? Please do join us!
Set in 1942 New York and Berlin, a magical novel about the life-giving powers of storytelling, and the heroism that can be inspired by love. It’s the innocent love story of a child and the family he has lost. And it is is the romantic tale of a young man who discovers the love of his life, then witnesses her decline, which changes the arc of his future forever.
Propelled by history and imagination and set against a vivid period backdrop, A Master Plan for Rescue is a beautiful, hopeful novel that suggests that people’s impact on the world doesn’t necessarily end with their lives.
Peter Orner says Janis Cooke Newman, “has a rare ability to completely inhabit totally disparate characters. Here, in this World War II-era story, two strangers come together and attempt the impossible. And once again, Newman breathes pulsing life into what we thought was history.”
Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the Bay Area Bestseller, Mary, Mrs. A. Lincoln, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and USA Today’s Best Historical Fiction of the Year. Newman is also the author of The Russian Word for Snow, a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage. Newman’s travel writing has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines, including the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Backpacker.