BY KAREN BOSSICK
Readers’ Choice Award Bronze winner Rebecca Anne Nguyen will read from her new novel at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 17, at Ketchum’s Community Library.
Nguyen will read and discuss her new novel “The 23rd Hero.” A book signing and reception will follow.
The novel combines dystopian science fiction, a call to environmental action and a passionate love story, according to author Melodie Winawer.
It has been described as “fierce, funny, rollicking, racy—a page-turning, wild and marvelous ride” by Pulitzer Prize Finalist and National Book Award winner Susan Choi. It’s also been described as “Outlander” meets “Dr. Who.”
It revolves around an ordinary woman with an extraordinary memory who is recruited for a time travel program to stop environmental disasters before they happen. But, when she falls in love with the program’s mysterious founder, she must learn to believe in herself and her abilities before she’s sent to 16th century France with no way to save the world, which is on the verge of being forced into underground bunkers by the climate crisis.
“I didn’t even know I was writing a novel. I just knew I felt some reprieve whenever I sank into the world of my imagination,” she said.
Nguyen, who lives in Milwaukee, won the 2024 Readers’ Choice Bronze Award for Best Adult Novel for her fiction debut “The 23rd Hero.”
She also received the 2019 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Silver Award for “Where War ends,” which she wrote with Tom Voss about an Iraq War veteran’s journey from suicidal despair to hope after he returns home with a moral injury. The book follows Voss as he embarks on a 2,700-mile journey from Milwaukee to the Pacific Ocean, meeting veterans, Native American healers and others along the way.
Her stage play “Hypotheticals” was the 2023 winner of Epiphanies New Works festival at Wild Imaginings Theatre company.
RSVP to see the program in person at https://thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/13296527. It also will be livestreamed and recorded to watch later at https://vimeo.com/event/4745293.