One Book Napa Reading and Book Signing with Margot Livesey

PICK UP YOUR COPY OF THE ROAD FROM BELHAVEN TODAY AT NAPA BOOKMINE TO JOIN ALONG WITH THIS READING JOURNEY.

Join us for a special event with ONE BOOK NAPA featuring author Margot Livesey. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance. THIS EVENT IS FOR THE JULY 18TH EVENT AT THE NAPA COUNTY LIBRARY.

Calling all Napa readers to join a one-of-a-kind “book club” this summer! Napa Valley Writers’ Conference (NVWC) in partnership with the Napa County Library, Napa Bookmine, and Copperfield’s Books are proud to present ONE BOOK NAPA, featuring The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey.

ONE BOOK NAPA will kick off on Saturday, June 7, 2025, at 11:30am with a fun-filled read-a-along at Decant Napa. Local authors, including NVWC director, Angela Pneuman, NVWC alums, Sasha Paulsen and Kirsten Mickelwait as well local authors, Kara Vernor, Andy Demsky, and others will read from The Road from Belhaven while guests read along with them or listen the lyrical words of Margot. The first 10 guests will receive a free copy of The Road from Belhaven.

ONE BOOK NAPA will culminate in a book reading and signing with Margot on Friday, July 18, 2025, at the Napa County Library.

Join ONE BOOK NAPA with their continuing events with Margot Livesey:

July 21 – 1:30pm – Fiction writing craft lecture with Margot Livesey, part of Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Performing Arts Center, Napa Valley College, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway, Napa. $25 admission at the door, $15 for students with ID.

July 23 – 4:30pm – Free discussion of the works of Margot Livesey and poet Brian Teare with author Caroline Goodwin, part of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Community Room, McCarthy Library, Napa Valley College, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway, Napa.

July 23 – 5:30pm – Wine reception and reading with Margot Livesey and poet Brian Teare, part of Napa Valley Writers’ Conference. Performing Arts Center, Napa Valley College, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway, Napa. $20 admission at the door, free for students with ID.

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.

Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.

Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven “is a marvel… a story as thrilling as it is thoughtful, one animated by life’s fundamental question: How do we change?” (Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents)

Margot Livesey grew up in a boys’ private school in the Scottish Highlands where her father taught, and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. After taking a B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England she spent most of her twenties working in shops and restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then Margot has published nine novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field. Her tenth novel, The Road from Belhaven, will be published in February 2024 by Knopf. The Hidden Machinery, a collection of essays on writing, was published by Tin House Books in 2017.

Margot has taught at Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists’ Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts. Margot is currently teaching at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives with her husband, a painter, in Cambridge, MA, and goes back to London and Scotland whenever she can.

Alice Sebold says, “Every novel of Margot Livesey’s is, for her readers, a joyous discovery. Her work radiates with compassion and intelligence and always, deliciously, mystery.”

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