Reserve your complimentary tickets now for this year's unique virtual event!
Opus & Olives
Sunday, October 10, 2021 | 6:30 p.m. Preshow | 7:00 p.m. Program
Where: Online in the location of your choosing
Opus & Olives is not your average virtual gala. This celebration includes four national bestselling authors coming directly to your home - and hundreds of fellow supporters watching from theirs - all in support of your Saint Paul Public Library. When you join us for Opus & Olives, you support early literacy, workforce development, and other lifelong learning opportunities for individuals of every age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. Your support is critical now more than ever. And you just might have some fun, too.
Opus RBC Registrants 2021
2021 Author Lineup
Wiley Cash, emcee
Wiley Cash is the New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home, the acclaimed This Dark Road to Mercy, and The Last Ballad. Cash is the recipient of the SIBA Book Award and the Conroy Legacy Award, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Edgar Award for Best Novel. Cash teaches fiction writing and literature at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, where he serves as Alumni Author-in-Residence. He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina with his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, and their two daughters. His new novel is When Ghosts Come Home.
About his latest work: When Ghosts Come Home
When the roar of a low-flying plane awakens him in the middle of the night, Sheriff Winston Barnes knows something strange is happening at the nearby airfield on the coast of North Carolina. But nothing can prepare him for what he finds: a large airplane has crash-landed and is now sitting sideways on the runway, and there are no signs of a pilot or cargo. When the body of a local man is discovered—shot dead and lying on the grass near the crash site—Winston begins a murder investigation that will change the course of his life and the fate of the community that he has sworn to protect.
Buy the book here. Buy all four featured books here.
Enter OPUS2021 at checkout so The Friends receives a portion of the proceeds.
Martha Hall Kelly
Martha Hall Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of three books: her debut novel, international blockbuster Lilac Girls, and the prequels Lost Roses and Sunflower Sisters. Never an enthusiastic history student in school, Martha developed a passion for it when she discovered the long-buried story of Caroline Ferriday, a New York socialite and philanthropist who championed the cause of a group of Polish women nicknamed the Rabbits and experimented upon by Nazi doctors at the all-female Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Martha is a former copywriter with journalism degrees from Syracuse and Northwestern Universities whose books have been published in 49 languages. She lives in Connecticut with her husband.
About her latest work: Sunflower Sisters
Georgeanna “Georgey” Woolsey isn’t meant for the world of lavish parties and the demure attitudes of women of her stature. So when war ignites the nation, Georgey follows her passion for nursing during a time when doctors considered women on the battlefront a bother. In proving them wrong, she and her sister Eliza venture from New York to Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg and witness the unparalleled horrors of slavery as they become involved in the war effort. Inspired by true accounts, Sunflower Sisters provides a vivid, detailed look at the Civil War experience, from the barbaric and inhumane plantations, to a war-torn New York City, to the horrors of the battlefield. It’s a sweeping story of women caught in a country on the brink of collapse, in a society grappling with nationalism and unthinkable racial cruelty.
Buy the book here. Buy all four featured books here.
Enter OPUS2021 at checkout so The Friends receives a portion of the proceeds.
James Oakes
James Oakes is the author of several books and articles on the subject of slavery, antislavery, and emancipation, including The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (2007) and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States (2012), both of which won the Lincoln Prize. His most recent book is The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution.
About his latest work: The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States.
Buy the book here. Buy all four featured author books here.
Enter OPUS2021 at checkout so The Friends receives a portion of the proceeds.
Kirstin Valdez Quade
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She is the recipient of a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, the Rome Prize, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Originally from New Mexico, she now lives in New Jersey and teaches at Princeton University.
About her latest work: The Five Wounds
The Five Wounds opens during Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, as thirty-three-year-old Amadeo Padilla prepares for the role of Jesus in the upcoming Good Friday Procession. His plans are disrupted however when he returns home to find his estranged fifteen-year-old daughter, Angel, on his doorstep and eight months pregnant. Unemployed and a burgeoning alcoholic, Amadeo lives with his mother Yolanda, who just made a horrific discovery and is reeling as she drives home alone from what was meant to be a romantic and relaxing week in Las Vegas. This unexpected family reunion begins a year of shocking changes and startling revelations in the Padilla family as their lives converge.
Buy the book here. Buy all four featured author books here.
Enter OPUS2021 at checkout so The Friends receives a portion of the proceeds.
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Don’t see your company’s name? Join us in promoting libraries and literacy! For more information on any of The Friends’ giving opportunities, please contact The Friends at 651/222-3242 or [email protected].