Monday, November 22, 2010

Reading Event at Boswell tonight

Douglas Armstrong, author of Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows

Emma Starkey is a spunky little girl trying hard to be charitable and virtuous. But her calculated attempts have a way of backfiring with tumultuous consequences in Douglas Armstrong’s poignant story of small-town life in 1920s Kansas. As Emma’s grandmother wryly observes, “Even sunflowers cast shadows.”  

 Weaving through four years of Emma’s engaging disasters is a chaotic friendship with a transplanted Yankee whiz kid, Margaret Drummond, whose family arrives one summer burdened with a heavy secret and a flair for the dramatic. As Emma’s and Margaret’s brothers and sisters become friends, too, their lively pursuits and youthful infatuations begin to spawn rivalries that threaten to split them apart. In the end, perilous, even tragic turns await.  This novel recaptures a faded moment in time when innocence could still be lost grudgingly.
 
Douglas Armstrong 
Author bio: Douglas Armstrong was born in Kansas, but his memories of it are largely second hand, as his family left when he was five. The stories told to him by his mother of life in the small Kansas town where she grew up form the basis of his first novel, Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows. His short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines from Ellery Queen to Alfred Hitchcock to Boys’ Life. After thirty years as a newspaper reporter, editorial writer, columnist and film critic at The Milwaukee Journal and later the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Armstrong has recently left journalism in order to turn to writing fiction full time. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Milwaukee Press Club, and lives in Whitefish Bay with his family.

No comments: