Sharon Dean on Her New Novel "Books Inn"

Monday February 1st 7:00 to 8:00 pm Sharon L. Dean will discuss her 10th novel, Books Inn, on February 1, 2027. A retired English professor from New Hampshire, Dean moved to Ashland fifteen years ago, gave up writing scholarly books that require footnotes, and turned to writing fiction. Books Inn was inspired by the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, Oregon, but is set in Maine in 1968 on the eve of the presidential election. Women are burning bras; men are burning draft cards. Lara Spaulding came to Books Inn to decide how to move forward after her husband died on an Air Force mission in Vietnam. Each room at the inn pays homage to classic nineteenth-century fiction: The Country of the Pointed Firs, The Turn of the Screw, The Scarlet Letter, Summer, The Yellow Wallpaper. The issues raised in these classic novels resonate with the volatile issues of 1968: war, politics, feminism, abortion. As Lara meets others at the inn, she unravels connections between their America and their backstories. Books Inn is a novel about loss and loneliness and about an era much like our own.