Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

In conversation with Sarah Ladipo Manyika

Please note this is a free event! However, if you would like to make a contribution to support Books & Books' virtual events, we are grateful for any and all donations. Donations can be made in the upper righthand corner, above the "Save My Spot!" registration button. Thank you!

An achingly beautiful story of female friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance set in the changing landscape of San Francisco.

Teenage Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know Sea Cliff’s homes and beaches, its hidden corners and eccentric characters—as well as the upscale all-girls’ school they attend. One day, walking to school with friends, they witness a horrible act—or do they? Eulabee and Maria Fabiola vehemently disagree on what happened, and their rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola’s sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths.

Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is Vendela Vida’s masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tidesis both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.

Vendela Vida is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your NameandThe Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty.She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine, and co-editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing center for youth, and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a novelist, short story writer, essayist and founding books editor for Ozy.com. Her debut novel, In Dependence, is an international bestseller while her second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, has been translated into a number of languages. Her nonfiction includes personal essays and intimate profiles of people she meets from Toni Morrison to Margaret Busby and Michelle Obama. Sarah currently serves as Board President for the women’s writing residency, Hedgebrook, and is creator and host of the Museum of the African Diaspora's conversations-across-the-diaspora. Sarah is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, and a member of the National Books Critics Circle.

We Run the Tides: A Virtual Evening with Vendela Vida and Sarah Ladipo Manyika