Kathleen Boland with Thomas Kohnstamm — 'Scavengers: A Novel'

Third Place Books welcomes author Kathleen Boland to our Ravenna store for a conversation about her debut novel, . Following the down-to-earth daughter of an eccentric mother on a quest to unearth a fortune in buried treasure, Scavengers is an ode to the American West, to reinvention, and to the joys and indignities of human connection. Kathleen will be joined in conversation by author Thomas Kohnstamm.

This event is free and open to the public. For important updates, RSVP is highly recommended in advance. This event will include a public signing and time for audience Q&A. Sustain our author series by purchasing a copy of the featured books!

This event is free to attend. Registration is recommended in advance.

Please note: While RSVP helps us anticipate attendance, your RSVP may not guarantee a seat. Seating is first-come, first-served, and all events at our Ravenna neighborhood store are free and open to the public. Only standing room may be available for events with high interest.

We are happy to accommodate any accessibility concerns. Please contact us at ZXZlbnRzIHwgdGhpcmRwbGFjZWJvb2tzICEgY29t or call our Ravenna store at (206) 525-2347.

“Wholly original and truly surprising, Scavengers is an ode to revisitation and reinvention, proving that changing your views of other people is the only way to change yourself. This is a desert rose of a debut.”
—Courtney Maum, author of Touch and Costalegre

A rollicking debut novel about a cautious daughter and her eccentric, estranged mother venturing west in search of buried treasure—and a way back to each other—before they run out of patience, money, and options

After being fired for taking an uncharacteristic risk at her commodities trading job, Bea Macon sublets her New York apartment and books a one-way ticket to stay with her mother, Christy, a free spirit who has been living in Salt Lake City on Bea's dime.

Usually the responsible one, Bea isn't about to admit exactly why she's suddenly decided to visit, but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets: Christy has a man. She has a map. She has . . . a username on a forum devoted to unearthing $1 million in buried treasure that an antiquities dealer claims to have hidden somewhere in the western U.S.?

Bea is convinced this is just another one of her mother’s wild larks, an elaborate way to refuse, as she has for Bea’s entire life, to finally grow up. But Christy believes she’s onto something—and she’s arranged a rendezvous in a rural town called Mercy with the guy she’s been obsessively trading theories with online to prove it. Out in the desert that one woman believes to be a promised land, the other a wasteland, they find themselves barreling toward a more high-stakes, transformative escapade than either of them could have imagined.

Populated with unforgettable characters and set against one of the world’s most oddly enrapturing landscapes, Scavengers is a funny and heartbreaking novel about old injuries, new beginnings, and the lengths to which we’ll go to find, escape, and reinvent ourselves.

Kathleen Boland’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere, and she has received support from the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. The former event director for Catapult/Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press, she earned her MFA from Louisiana State University, where she received the Robert Penn Warren Thesis Award.

Thomas Kohnstamm was born and raised in Seattle and still lives in the same house he grew up in—now with his wife and two children. He’s been a freelance writer for more than twenty years and has run his own multimedia content studio since 2011. Supersonic is his third book.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

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