The Blue Hill Public Library and Blue Hill Books are cosponsoring an author event with Maine author Debra Spark for her new book Discipline at the library at 7 pm on August 1, 2024 in the Howard Room.

How does art mirror and shape our lives? Can it transcend the boundaries of time, wealth, and circumstance? With a trio of important paintings missing, Discipline weaves together three narratives that span almost a century. From an inhumane boarding school in Maine in the late 1970s to a contemporary Boston art appraiser struggling with raising a teen to the long-lost love letters between a painter and his wife, Discipline is a propulsive literary mystery about family strife and devotion, ambition and authorship, and the abiding and mysterious power of art.

Inspired by aspects of the life and family of Walt Kuhn (the painter responsible for the 1913 Armory Show that introduced Americans to modernism) and the scandal-ridden Elan boarding school that was forced to shut down in 2011, this richly drawn, suspenseful novel shows Spark at her most masterful.

Debra is the award-winning author of five novels, two collections of short stories; and two books of essays on fiction writing, as well as editor/co-editor of two anthologies.  Her novel Unknown Caller was picked for Maine’s statewide summer READ ME program. . A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the Zacamy Professor of English at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in Maine with her husband, the painter Garry Mitchell.  Her son is a carpenter and cartoonist, which means she raised a child who excels at her areas of utter incompetence.

This program is free and open to all. For more information, contact Kayleigh at 374-5515 or by emailing kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net.