Reading: Beth Kendrick April 14, 2005

Author Beth Kendrick will read from and sign copies of her book, ?My Favorite Mistake,? at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 14 at River City Books, located at 306 Division Street in downtown Northfield. The event is free and open to the public.

A relative newcomer to the exuberant and entertaining genre of chick lit, Kendrick?s decision to write professionally stemmed neither from a sudden epiphany nor as the culmination of years of literary study. While a working on her Ph.D. in psychology at UCLA, Kendrick attended the wedding of a well-established romance author. After being regaled for hours by the bride?s friends with stories about their own experiences crafting and publishing works about life as a woman in today?s society, Kendrick decided to try her hand at writing?in between publishing her dissertation, marrying her fiancé and moving across the country.

The result was ?My Favorite Mistake,? which won the 2002 Romance Writers of America?s Golden Heart Award for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance before being published by Pocket Books. The story revolves around Faith Geary, a young single woman living in Italy, who returns to the small town in southern Minnesota where she grew up and the man she left at the altar in order to help her younger sister through a sudden divorce and an unplanned pregnancy.

Kendrick, a 1998 Carleton graduate whose actual last name is Lavin, freely admits to setting the book?s story in a fictionalized version of Northfield. Much of the plot revolves around a rural bar which was created out of Kendrick?s memories of hanging out and studying at Northfield?s J. Grundy?s Rueb?n?Stein, known simply as ?the Reub? to most Northfielders. As a nod to those who supported her during her time at Carleton, Kendrick named the town hospital in ?My Favorite Mistake? for Carleton Professor of English Timothy Raylor, who appreciated and encouraged Kendrick?s early attempts at writing in the college newspaper. The book serves as Kendrick?s homage to her years of exploration and self-discovery at Carleton, an experience which allowed her to develop into the person and writer she is today.

For more information and disability accommodations, call John Lee at River City Books (507-646-7754).