Winter 2008
Reading, Discussion with Author, and Book Signing
Kennedy Commons
Thursday, February 14, 2008
11:30 a.m.
The Library presents The Distant Land of My Father as the Winter 2008 Book of the Quarter. This book has been especially selected because it is also the choice for this year's Silicon Valley Reads program, a program which is presented by the San Jose Public Library Foundation, the Santa Clara County Library, and the Santa Clara County Office of Education.
As SCU's contribution to this program, the Library is honored to have the book's author, Bo Caldwell, on campus for a reading, discussion and book signing. The Book of the Quarter event will be held Thursday, February 14th beginning at 11:30 a.m. in the Kennedy Commons. The event is open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
You do not have to read the book to attend. Copies of the book are available for purchase at the campus bookstore. The library has one copy of The Distant Land of My Father and more copies are available through Link+.
This riveting novel opens with Anna, the narrator, living in a storybook world: pre-World War II Shanghai, with handsome young parents, wealth, and comfort. Her father, the son of missionaries, is a charming-though secretive-man, whose greatest joy is sharing his beloved city with his only daughter. Yet, when Anna and her mother flee Japanese-occupied Shanghai to return to California, he stays behind, believing his connections and a little bit of luck will keep him safe.
About Bo Caldwell
Bo Caldwell was born in Oklahoma City, but grew up in Los Angeles. She attended Stanford University, where she later held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing and a Jones Lectureship in Creative Writing. She has received a fellowship in literature from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council of Santa Clara County, and the Joseph Henry Jackson Award from the San Francisco Foundation. Her personal essays have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and America Magazine, and her short stories have been included in Story, Ploughshares, Epoch, and other literary journals. The Distant Land of My Father, was published in hardcover by Chronicle Books in October of 2001 and in paperback by Harcourt in September of 2002. The book was a national bestseller, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, and a Booksense 76 pick. Foreign rights were sold to the U.K., the Netherlands, France, and Italy.