Book Your Lunch with Rebecca Rasmussen June 7, 2011

Book Your Lunch with debut novelist Rebecca Rasmussen on Tuesday, June 7th from 12-2 pm at The Lazy Goat in downtown Greenville. Tickets are $25 each and must be purchased in advance at http://www.bookyourlunch.com or by calling Fiction Addiction at 864-675-0540.

Each Book Your Lunch event includes a 20-minute reading or talk by the author, a Q&A session with the audience, a delicious lunch, and an onsite booksigning session. Books may be purchased from Fiction Addiction at or prior to the event.

Rebecca Rasmussen’s debut novel, The Bird Sisters (Crown Publishers, hardcover, $24.00, releases 4/12), “is a unique, beautifully written, and heartbreaking story that explores the fierce bonds, wounds, and tender complexities of the human heart.” -Beth Hoffman, bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

When a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds’ heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can’t, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who’ve brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.

But back in the summer of 1947, they knew nothing about trying to mend what had been accidentally broken. Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes, and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn’t change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn’t exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly’s eye. And, most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.

About the author:
Rebecca Rasmussen grew up in Spring Green, Wisconsin, but also in Northfield, Illinois, because of her parents divorcing when she was a baby. Since her life was split between the two places, she’s never really felt that either belonged to her. The idea for The Bird Sisters came out of two things: her curiosity about her grandmother and her family history, and her devotion to finding the answer to the ongoing question in her life: what does it mean to be home? The book was completed during her tenure in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts and has taught her that home doesn’t always translate to four sturdy white walls.

Ms. Rasmussen now lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and daughter, where she teaches writing and literature at Fontbonne University. In addition to writing, she enjoys reading nonfiction books and is training for a half-marathon this fall. She also loves to bake pies and is interested in all things old and outdated, though at the end of the day, when it’s 105 outside, she’s pretty thankful for thermal windows and air conditioning.

Official Website: http://www.bookyourlunch.com