Author Talk with Leslie Budawitz

Join us in the Cordingley Room at the Great Falls Public Library for an author talk with Leslie Budawitz!

Step back into Montana’s past with multiple award-winning author Leslie Budewitz.

Born into slavery in Tennessee, the remarkable “Stagecoach Mary” Fields was a larger-than-life figure who cherished her independence, yet formed a deep bond with the Ursuline Sisters, traveling to their Montana mission in 1885 and spending the last thirty years of her life living there or in nearby Cascade. Mary is believed to have been the first Black woman in the country to drive a U.S. Postal Star Route, the source of her nickname.

In All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories, Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz brings together three short stories, each originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, imagining the life of Stagecoach Mary in her first year in Montana, and a novella exploring her later life, including: All God’s Sparrows, winner of the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story; Miss Starr’s Good-bye, a nominee for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award; Coming Clean, a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s 2021 Spur Award for Best Short Story; and A Bitter Wind, a brand-new novella in which Mary helps a young woman newly arrived in the valley solve the mystery of her fiancé's death and his homesteading neighbors’ bitterness toward him.

Includes an abbreviated bibliography and historical notes from the author.

You may also like the following events from Great Falls Public Library:

• This Wednesday, 30th April, 06:00 pm, BRING THEM HOME: Aiskótáhkapiyaaya Documentary Viewing WITH CO-DIRECTORS in Great Falls
• Next month, 29th May, 04:00 pm, Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer's Documentary Showing, Memory Screening, and Tai Chi in Great Falls
• This June, 21st June, 12:00 pm, Juneteenth Celebration in Great Falls

Also check out other Arts events in Great Falls, Literary Art events in Great Falls.