Join Porter Square Books for a virtual talk with Susan Conley for her highly anticipated new novel, Landslide, joined in conversation with Lily King (Writers & Lovers)! This event is free and open to all, hosted on Crowdcast.

“I loved Landslide... You are right there with them in a fishing village in Maine, feeling the wind, the sea, the danger, just as you feel Jill's worries, frustrations, her longings, her love for her family. Smart, honest, and funny, this is a story you won't forget.”—Judy Blume, author of In the Unlikely Event

A "spectacular" novel about a family on the brink that “hits it out of the park” (Lily King), from the critically acclaimed author of Elsey Comes Home—an O. Magazine, Marie Claire, PopSugar, and Southern Living must-read.

After a fishing accident leaves her husband hospitalized across the border in Canada, Jill is left to look after her teenage boys--"the wolves"--alone. Nothing comes easy in their remote corner of Maine: money is tight; her son Sam is getting into more trouble by the day; her eldest, Charlie, is preoccupied with a new girlfriend; and Jill begins to suspect her marriage isn't as stable as she once believed. As one disaster gives way to the next, she begins to think that it's not enough to be a caring wife and mother anymore--not enough to show up when needed, to nudge her boys in the right direction, to believe everything will be okay. But how to protect this life she loves, this household, this family?

With remarkable poise and startling beauty, Landslide ushers us into a modern household where, for a family at odds, Instagram posts, sex-positivity talks, and old fishing tales mingle to become a kind of love language. It is a beautiful portrait of a family, as compelling as it is moving, and raises the question of how to remain devoted when the eye of the storm closes in.

Susan Conley grew up in Maine. She is the author of four previous books including Elsey Come Home. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares. She has received multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, as well as from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. She has won the Maine Literary Award and the Maine Award for Publishing Excellence. She is a founder of the Telling Room, a youth creative writing center in Portland, Maine, where she lives and teaches on the faculty of the Stonecoast Writing Program.

Lily King’s novel Father of The Rain (2010) was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of the 2010 New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. The English Teacher (2005) won the Maine Fiction Award, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year. Her first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999), won the B&N Discover Award, was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. King is also the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.

Susan Conley with Lily King, Landslide