Women's Speaker Series: P.S. Duffy, author of The Cartographer of No Man's Land
Fee: $25/$20 members - includes an autographed copy of The Cartographer of No Man's Land, refreshments by MKELocalicious and admission to the sculpture garden. Bronze Optical invites you to arrive early to browse a diverse, vibrant selection of frames--mirror provided, of course!--while they clean and tighten the screws in your current eyewear. Register online now.
Margy Stratton, founder and executive producer of Milwaukee Reads continues her series of events featuring writers of particular interest to women.
Lynden Sculpture Garden's Women's Speaker Series, Bronze Optical, and Boswell Books welcome P.S. Duffy, author of The Cartographer of No Man's Land, to the Lynden Sculpture Garden, Tuesday, September 29, 7-9 pm.
From a hardscrabble village in Nova Scotia to the collapsing trenches of France, a debut novel about a family divided by World War I.
In the tradition of Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife and Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn, P. S. Duffy’s astonishing debut showcases a rare and instinctive talent emerging in midlife. Her novel leaps across the Atlantic, between a father at war and a son coming of age at home without him.
When his beloved brother-in-law goes missing at the front in 1916, Angus defies his pacifist upbringing to join the war and find him. Assured a position as a cartographer in London, he is instead sent directly into the visceral shock of battle. Meanwhile, at home, his son Simon Peter must navigate escalating hostility in a fishing village torn by grief. With the intimacy of The Song of Achilles and the epic scope of The Invisible Bridge, The Cartographer of No Man’s Land offers a soulful portrayal of World War I and the lives that were forever changed by it, both on the battlefield and at home.
“It should do for WWI what Matterhorn did for Vietnam."
-Publishers Weekly, BEA preview
“I cannot believe this is a debut novel. Incredibly well written, with beautifully executed characters, and so obviously grounded in research without ever being didactic – I loved this book. It’s one of the best I’ve read in a long time.”
–Becky Day, TCC/City of Virginia Beach Joint Use Library
“Brilliant. The description of front line action in the trenches is impressively real, and the ending blessedly free from sentimentality. Altogether a remarkable debut.”
–Simon Mawer, author of Trapeze and The Glass Room
About the Author
P.S. Duffy lives in Rochester, Minnesota. She grew up in New England and Baltimore and spent 35 summers sailing in Nova Scotia, where her family roots go back to 1754. She has a degree in history from Concordia University in Montreal and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and had a 25-year career in neurologically based communication disorders. She now balances writing in the neurosciences for Mayo Clinic with creative writing and is the author of a graduate textbook, flash fiction, essays, and creative non-fiction. The Cartographer of No Man’s Land (Liveright/W.W. Norton), is her first novel.
