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ABC Documentary on Geraldine Brooks

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ABC Compass follows Pulitzer Prize-winner and beloved Australian author Geraldine Brooks as she goes to Flinders Island, Tasmania, to finally grieve the sudden death of her husband, Tony Horwitz. As a convert to Judaism, she ponders how other religions use rituals to help with healing.

Geraldine Brooks was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her novels People of the BookCaleb’s CrossingThe Secret Chord and Horse all were New York Times Bestsellers. Her first novel, Year of Wonders is an an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages and currently optioned for a limited series by Olivia Coleman’s production company. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of DesireForeign Correspondence and The Idea of Home. Her latest book, Memorial Days, was published January 24 in Australia, and February 4 in the United States.

Memorial Days Book Tour Dates

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Photo credit: Elizabeth Cecil

Previous Events

The previous book tour events for Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks are below. You can also follow Geraldine on FaceBook for up-to-date event info.

Tuesday, February 4 – San Francisco, CA
BOOK PASSAGE at Dominican University of California
In Conversation with Michael Lewis
More info here >

Thursday, February 6 – Kansas City, MO
RAINY DAY BOOKS at Unity Temple
In Conversation with David Von Drehle
More info here >

Saturday, February 8 – Traverse City, MI, NATIONAL WRITER’S SERIES
In Conversation with Jacki Lyden
More info here >

Monday, February 10 – Washington, DC
6TH & I + POLITICS & PROSE
In Conversation with Kara Swisher
More info here >

Wednesday, February 12 – Miami, FL
BOOKS & BOOKS
In Conversation with Mitchell Kaplan
More info here >

Thursday, February 13 – Nashville, TN
PARNASSUS BOOKS
In Conversation with Ann Patchett
More info here >

Thursday, February 20 – Cambridge, MA
PORTER SQUARE BOOKS
In Conversation with Ron Suskind
More info here >

Friday, February 21 – San Diego, CA 
WARWICK’S at IPJ Theatre
In Conversation with Dr. Jillian Tullis
More info here >

More Tour Dates for Horse Posted!

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Geraldine Brooks has just posted some more tour dates for her book Horse. You can see all Geraldine’s events here.

Horse is Geraldine BrooksNew York Times bestseller 

NEW EVENTS FOR SUMMER 2023

Tuesday, June 13, Traverse City, MI
National Writers Series

Wednesday June 14, Philadelphia PA
Free Library of Philadelphia

Friday, June 16, Scarsdale NY
Scarsdale Public Library

Tuesday, June 20, Dallas TX
The Dallas Museum Of Art–Arts & Letters Live

Wednesday, June 21, Portsmouth NH
The Music Hall


“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.”
The New York Times Book Review

Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.”
TIME

How Bestselling Author & Pulitzer-Winner Geraldine Brooks Writes

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Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner, Geraldine Brooks, spoke to me about why “truth is stranger than fiction,” letting story drive narrative, and the overheard conversation that led to her latest, “Horse.”

Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March and the international bestsellers The Secret Chord, Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders (recently optioned by Olivia Colman).

Her latest novel, Horse, is described as “… a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.” TIME magazine said of the book, “Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.”

Geraldine has also written acclaimed nonfiction works including Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. She started out as a reporter in her hometown, Sydney, and went on to cover conflicts as a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Bosnia, Somalia, and the Middle East.

GBH News: Horse – Under the Radar Podcast

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“How is it possible that the bones of a champion racehorse were not too long ago consigned to the dusty attic of the Smithsonian? A horse whose stellar career and long pedigree were little known outside some racing circles? These real-life details intrigued bestselling author Geraldine Brooks. leading her to craft a fictional tale based on the documented history of that top racing horse named Lexington. Brooks’ simply titled novel “Horse” is a tale of the twinned histories of both Lexington and the people who admired her. It is a thrilling narrative stretching across centuries and set against a backdrop of racial turbulence, art history and scientific inquiry.”

“Horse” is our July selection for “Bookmarked: The Under the Radar Book Club.”

More at GBH News >

Geraldine Brooks Probes Racing—and Race—in Her New Historical Novel, Horse

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From Oprah Magazine “The Pulitzer Prize winner explores the unwritten true tale of America’s most famous racehorse—and uses that story to show how far we need to go in confronting systemic racism.

Don’t let the title fool you; Geraldine Brooks’s Horse is not Black Beauty for grown-ups. Yes, the title character is one of history’s most famous equine celebrities, a foal named Darley, who later became a pop culture phenomenon called Lexington—and was revered as the fastest horse in the world. But first and foremost, Horse is a thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty.

Lexington is one of several characters in the book—the rest of them human—based on real-life figures, as Horse is a product of careful research fleshed out with vivid imagination. It’s a technique that has served Brooks well; she earned a Pulitzer Prize for March, which follows the fictional father in Little Women, based in part on the real-life Bronson Alcott. But while the historic detail in the book is impressive, it’s the fictions filling in the blanks where Brooks’s genius truly shines.”

More at Oprah >

More Praise for Horse

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New York Times bestseller 

“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.”
The New York Times Book Review

Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.”
TIME

Geraldine Brooks on tour for HORSE

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In person and virtual events • Jump to Australian & Previous events

New Events for Summer 2023

Tuesday, June 13, Traverse City, MI
National Writers Series

Wednesday June 14, Philadelphia PA
Free Library of Philadelphia

Friday, June 16, Scarsdale NY
Scarsdale Public Library

Tuesday, June 20, Dallas TX
The Dallas Museum Of Art–Arts & Letters Live

Wednesday, June 21, Portsmouth NH
The Music Hall


Previous Events

Thursday, August 25, Buffalo, NY – 5:30 PM
Larkin Square + Talking Leaves Books
More information here

Saturday, September 3, Washington, DC –  12:10 PM EST
Library of Congress – In Person
National Book Festival
In conversation with Marie Arana
More information here

Wednesday, September 21, Saratoga Springs, NY – 7pm
Saratoga Performing Arts Center – In Person
In Conversation with Sarah Maslin Nir
More information here

Friday, September 23, Lenox Ma. 11:30
WIT: Words, Ideas and Thinkers Festival – In Person
In conversation with Roxana Robinson
More information here

Thursday, October 27, Lexington, KY
Kentucky Book Festival Literary Lunch
More information here

Saturday, November 5, Phoenix Arizona – 9:30 AM
Arizona Women’s Board – In Person
43rd Annual Friends of Erma Bombeck Authors Luncheon
More information here

Saturday, November 12, Charleston, SC – mid-afternoon or early evening
Charleston Literary Festival
More information here

Australian Events

The Australian tour for Horse is finished–for now.

The Secret Chord: Interview

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What interests you most about King David? How did you decide to write a novel about him?

When my son was about nine years old, he made the unusual decision to learn to play the harp. (I’d been braced for drums, so I didn’t actually resist the choice.) Watching him, dwarfed by his teacher’s gorgeous concert instrument, I began to think about that other long ago boy harpist, the shepherd who became a king. He’s ubiquitous, after all: a cliché in our language (how many contests are David and Goliath battles?); gorgeously depicted throughout the history of Western art; the psalms attributed to him sung in churches and synagogues across millennia. But who was this warrior-poet-musician, this lover and killer, who experiences every human joy and every human heartbreak? I went back to the bible to look for him, and found that the best stories from his life are the least told ones.

How did you research and prepare to write THE SECRET CHORD?

I started with the period itself, the Second Iron Age, to discover as much as I could about the context for a leader like David. How did tribal power work? What did people eat? How did they fight? What would they have known about the wider world? Archaeology and ancient history answered many of these questions. Others had to be answered experientially.   What was it like to herd sheep on a hot afternoon in the Judean hills? My younger son and I went and did it. We also visited sites associated with David, going to places like the Valley of Elah where he clashed with Goliath, Ein Gedi where he hid out from Shaul and exploring the tunnels under Jerusalem where excavations are uncovering buildings of the Davidian period. I talked with Israeli military experts about some of the strategic issues David faced. I consulted experts on early Hebrew music, trying to get a feel for the sound of what David might have played.

As a journalist, you covered the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal. Did your experience with the location and its history enhance your ability to write THE SECRET CHORD?

My first impulse is to say no, because in three thousand years, too much has changed. The flora and fauna are entirely different. The land is dense with millions of people rather than the scattered thousands who lived there in that era. And yet on reflection, a number of experiences did shape my thinking. Covering modern desert warfare, interviewing contemporary despots and seeing how absolute power is wielded, living among people whose lives are entirely shaped, and sometimes deformed, by ardent religious conviction—all these things fed my imagination in some way. Also, in my six years living among the women of the region, I saw how those who may appear to be powerless on the surface, often in fact exert tremendous influence. This helped shape my thinking about the lives of David’s wives, Mikhal and Batsheva.

David is a complicated character—at once a warrior and despot, a lover and adulterer, a poet and composer, a coarse yet refined man of fierce will and great appetites who is also capable of baseness and treachery. In your opinion, what are David’s biggest flaws? What are his greatest strengths?

Well, he’s a murderer, which is pretty hard to get past. He abuses power. He’s also a criminally indulgent parent. But he is paid out heavily for these crimes and flaws. Unlike many of our modern leaders, when he makes a mistake, he admits it. He listens to criticism. I’m drawn to his ardency, his huge capacity for love.

David has been widely depicted in art, literature, and film. Did you consult other portrayals while writing THE SECRET CHORD? Is there anything you feel previous depictions get wrong about him?  

I read everything I could find. I watched some truly execrable movies. I revisited favorite art works and discovered masterpieces that were new to me. The Australian painter Arthur Boyd, for example, has a poignant depiction of David and Shaul that taps into the artist’s own pain as the son of a mentally unstable father. Many of the scholarly works, (Pinksy and Wolpe being two notable exceptions) tend to be either/or, black/white, twisting data to condemn or exonerate him. To me it was more interesting to accept the contradictions in his nature, the multi-faceted complexity of it.

How did you decide which stories and characters from David’s life to include in the novel, and which to leave out?

I didn’t leave much out. Perhaps I tended to dwell less on the military campaigns and more on the domestic entanglements. I found myself most drawn to the women in the narrative, the love stories—and, yes, hate-stories– of his many relationships.

The novel is primarily told through the eyes of Natan, the mysterious prophet who becomes David’s direct connection to the divine, his lifelong companion and advisor, and the moral conscience of the novel. Where did you inspiration for Natan come from?

The inspiration came from two references in the bible that I have used here as epigraphs, each of which refers to the lost “book of Natan.” The bible says Natan has given a full account of the lives of David and Shlomo, all their acts, “from first to last.” What would such a man have seen? What would he have known?   How would his portrayal differ from the accounts that we do have, in the two books of Samuel, in Kings and in Chronicles? It’s tantalizing, and it took hold of my imagination. I’ve always loved the Hebrew prophets, in any case. These men of huge moral force, these pain-in–the-ass truth tellers who had the guts to castigate their society and its rulers, often in the most exquisitely crafted language. You can feel their fierceness, their penetrating intelligence, their bravery.

You’ve written many historical novels, but none set so far back in time as THE SECRET CHORD. Was it challenging to capture the voice of the period?

I don’t think it’s possible to recapture the voice of a period so distant from our own. What I tried to avoid were the familiar flowery cadences of King James Bible English, striving instead for something that evoked the bluntness and the austere beauty of the biblical Hebrew.

What were the biggest challenges you encountered in the writing of this novel?

David shimmers somewhere in the half-light between history and myth. My challenge was to approach an emotional truth that seemed real and recognizable without losing the sense of the supernatural, the slightly magical aura that surrounds a man we’re told lived his life in the hand of the divine.

Illustrated map by Laura Hartman Maestro

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This map is from the inside cover of People of the Book. It was designed by Laura Hartman Maestro. This is for personal use only and may not be reproduced or distributed without written permission. If you would like to use this for your reading group please contact us first.

people-of-the-book-map