At the Cornish Pasty. It was a small contention of our book club gals hitting the east side for a reading and book signing by Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle. We first had to get some grub and stopped by The Cornish Pasty where we partook in some doughy, flakey goodness. I am not a fan of salami above, so I went with the Chicken Pot Pie pasty and was perfectly pleased.
Jeannette was in town promoting her new book: Half-Broke Horses: A True Life Novel, hence the reason for the cross-town jaunt at rush hour. Our book club gang loved her debut and were excited to see what her sophomore effort was all about. Turns out, Jeannette's taken stories from a very contentious character in her own life, her mother, and interviewed her to capture the life and times of the family matriarch, and Jeannette's grandmother, Lily Casey Smith. Smith was a tough talkin', pioneerin' woman that taught school in a one room house in rural Arizona. Sounds like just the kind of book I could dig into and at less than 300 pages, it's prime for my 52 Books in 52 Weeks project!
Jeannette didn't read. In fact, what she did was so much better. She just talked to all of us. With a crowd that filled the auditorium of a local high school, she covered her background (the story of memoir The Glass Castle) and told us about her mother and grandmother. Adding to the night was the six-degrees-of-separation-small-world-freaky-deaky coincidence of a woman who had had Annie Casey Smith as a teacher when she was growing up! She stood up and told some of her own tales about Smith, the corporal punishment she applied in the classroom, and the screechy voice with with she sang by the school's player piano. The evening was just the right mix of humor, excitement, pause and reflection to have me ready to dig right in to Half-Broke Horses. It didn't hurt that Jeannette was so generous and allowed me and my gal pals some photos.
L-R: Claudia, Yumiko, Jeannette, Jonel and me.
Me and Jeannette
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