Jan 29 2020
Lance Olsen | My Red Heaven & Melanie Rae Thon | The Bodies of Birds

Lance Olsen | My Red Heaven & Melanie Rae Thon | The Bodies of Birds

Presented by The King's English Bookshop at The King's English Bookshop

Lance Olsen and Melanie Rae Thon will read from and sign their new books, My Red Heaven and The Bodies of Birds.

Set on a single day in 1927, My Red Heaven imagines a host of characters―some historic, some invented―crossing paths on the streets of Berlin.
The subjects include Robert Musil, Otto Dix, Werner Heisenberg, Anita Berber, Vladimir Nabokov, Käthe Kollwitz, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Rosa Luxemburg―as well as others history has forgotten: a sommelier, a murderer, a prostitute, a pickpocket, and several ghosts.
Drawing inspiration from Otto Freundlich’s painting by the same name, My Red Heaven explores a complex moment in history: the rise of deadly populism at a time when everything seemed possible and the future unimaginable.

The Bodies of Birds: Resurrected and restored through the bodies of multitudes, a young woman who becomes an organ donor after a car accident radiates unmitigated love as she comes to know the recipients of her heart and kidneys—lungs, bowel, vertebrae, corneas . . . Twenty-seven years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, black storks glide over the Zone of Alienation. Apple trees bloom; lilacs flower—radioactive wolves thrive; bees make glowing honey . . . A prisoner in California, a man who killed a woman a hundred times, who stabbed face and throat, heart and belly, now washes another man in the shower, shaves his face, changes his diapers, protects and serves a murderer like himself, riddled by dementia . . .

Prayers, love songs, laments, confessions—these three provocative immersions through and beyond the body explore the revelatory expansiveness of consciousness and compassion; the persistence of love; the trauma of intimate violence and environmental devastation; unexpected grace; and the remarkable resilience of the marvelously diverse more-than-human world.

Places in the signing line are reserved for those who purchase a copy of My Red Heaven and/or The Bodies of Birds from The King's English.

GET YOUR COPY NOW! Pre-order your signed copy of My Red Heaven and/or The Bodies of Birds today, by either calling the store at 801-484-9100 or ordering online. Please specify if you will be attending the event and if you want your book personalized.

Dates & Times

2020/01/29 - 2020/01/29

Location Info

The King's English Bookshop

1511 South 1500 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84105