What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me

Wednesday, July 12, at 5:00: WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WOULD HAVE TOLD ME, author talk with Donna Gordon.

WHAT BEN FRANKLIN WOULD HAVE TOLD ME explores the story of Lee, a vibrant thirteen-year-old boy who is facing premature death from Progeria (a premature aging disease); his caretaker Tomás, a survivor of Argentina’s Dirty War, who is searching for his missing wife, who was pregnant when they were both "disappeared;" and Lee's single mother, Cass, overwhelmed by love for her son and the demands of her work as a Broadway makeup artist. When a mix- up prevents Cass from taking Lee on his "final wish" trip to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia to pursue his interest in the life of Ben Franklin, Tomás--who has discovered potential leads to his family in both cities--offers to accompany Lee on the trip. As one flees memories of death and the other hurtles inevitably toward it, they each share unsettling truths and find themselves transformed in the process of change. Set during the Ronald Reagan presidency, this lyrical novel transcends an adventure story to take the reader on an unforgettable journey which explores love, family and the inevitability of change.

Donna Gordon is a fiction writer and visual artist from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a PEN Discovery, and Ploughshares Discovery. She received the 2018 New Letters Publication Award for What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me, which received a starred Kirkus review and was described as, “A soulful journey that offers surprises and unforeseen victories.”

Email tthorpe@clamsnet.org for more information.

Free. Sponsored by the Friends of the Chilmark Library. 508-645-3360