Join Pittsburgh native and local favorite Stewart O'Nan for a reading and signing celebrating his newest book Ocean State
Set in a working-class town on the Rhode Island coast, O’Nan’s latest is a crushing, beautifully written, and profoundly compelling novel about sisters, mothers, and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do.
In the first line of Ocean State, we learn that a high school student was murdered, and we find out who did it. The story that unfolds from there with incredible momentum is thus one of the build-up to and fall-out from the murder, told through the alternating perspectives of the four women at its heart. Angel, the murderer, Carol, her mother, and Birdy, the victim, all come alive on the page as they converge in a climax both tragic and inevitable. Watching over it all is the retrospective testimony of Angel’s younger sister Marie, who reflects on that doomed autumn of 2009 with all the wisdom of hindsight.
Stewart O’Nan is the author of numerous books, including Wish You Were Here, Everyday People (set in East Liberty), In the Walled City, The Speed Queen, and Emily, Alone (set in Highland Park). His 2007 novel, Last Night at the Lobster, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is a native Pittsburgher and an Allderdice grad (Go Dragons!).