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Please join Clifford Garstang in conversation with Christina Chiu, celebrating the publication of Cliff’s new novel, Oliver’s Travels. Registration is required for the event hosted by The Book Dragon Bookshop of Staunton, Virginia.
May 18, 2021, 7:00 pm EDT
Register in advance for this event:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIscumhqTkrE9wBgfCeGng5L13VT3yeJSm3
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Signed copies of the book are available for purchase and pick-up in Staunton from The Book Dragon at 102 W. Beverley Street, 540-712-7941. For buyers outside of Staunton, please support the store by ordering from The Book Dragon on Bookshop.org.
You can still pre-order from the publisher or your favorite independent bookstore. Or pre-order from Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.
Clifford Garstang is the author of the novels Oliver’s Travels and The Shaman of Turtle Valley as well as three story collections: House of the Ancients and Other Stories, What the Zhang Boys Know, winner of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction, and In an Uncharted Country, winner of an Independent Publisher Gold Medal. He is also the editor of the acclaimed anthology series, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet. A former international lawyer, he lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
Christina Chiu is the grand prize winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel, Beauty. She is also the author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Troublemaker was an alternate selection for BOMC and QPB, a nominee for a BOMC First Fiction Award, and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salons in New York City. She received her MFA in writing from Columbia University.
About Oliver’s Travels: Ollie Tucker, a recent college graduate and student of philosophy, is obsessed with truth and the source of knowledge, questioning the validity of everything he hears from his parents, his girlfriend, and even the voices inside his head. In pursuit of the truth and life’s deeper meaning, he invents an alter ego, Oliver, who lives the adventurous and exotic existence Ollie cannot. But Ollie has another problem—a repressed memory of his uncle Scotty that threatens to derail his life, his relationships, and his sexuality. But the memory is a blur. And what he thinks he remembers, he knows is unreliable. The uncertainty is paralyzing. What is the truth? What has his subconscious fabricated? When he learns that his uncle, long-presumed dead, is in fact alive and well, Ollie realizes that to move on with his life and find peace, he must confront his uncle. With wry humor and finely wrought prose, Oliver’s Travels is a shimmering coming-of-age story that explores enduring questions: What do we know? How do we know it?
Praise for Oliver’s Travels
“In Oliver’s Travels, Clifford Garstang deftly explores the fragility of memory. Ollie, an aspiring writer, must navigate the mundane while, at the same time, imagining a life of fulfillment for his alter ego, Oliver. Garstang displays his gift for contemplation and characterization as Ollie moves undauntedly in search of answers to life’s questions and discovers, in this journey marked with wanderlust, how the past and the present will forever share porous boundaries.” -Jon Pineda, author of Let’s No One Get Hurt
“One man’s search for the truth about himself — a tour of his own head that winds up taking him on a tour of the world. A witty, humane meditation on the slippery slope of childhood memory.” -Jonathan Dee, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, author of The Locals and The Privileges
“This is a novel with an edge and a heart, constantly riveting and always smart, not to mention funny! Its humor, in part, derives from the keen intelligence and the pitch-perfect nature of the sterling prose. A must read.” -Fred Leebron, author of Six Figures and Welcome to Christiania
“A twisty metafictional and metaphysical tour of the world – and the author’s mind – that examines not only how humans make stories, but how they make us. Fascinating and endlessly surprising.” -Liam Callanan, author of Paris by the Book and Listen & Other Stories
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