Hadley Richardson is a quiet twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness—until she meets Ernest Hemingway and her life changes forever.

“I first came to know Hadley in the pages of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s remarkable memoir of his years in Paris. His reminiscences of Hadley were so moving that I decided to seek out biographies of her life—and that’s when I knew what I’d found something special. Her voice and the arc of her life were riveting,” says author Paula McLain. “She’s the perfect person to show us a side of Hemingway we’ve never seen before—tender, vulnerable, and very human—but she’s also an extraordinary person in her own right.”

Set during a remarkable time, the same period as Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises, Paula McLain's The Paris Wife brilliantly captures the voice and heart of Hadley as she struggles with her roles as a woman—wife, lover, muse, friend, and mother—and tries to find her place in the intoxicating and tumultuous world of Paris in the twenties.

The Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District is proud to honor The Paris Wife as the 2012 One Book Two Villages title.

“I was captivated by the love story between Hadley and Ernest, and knew it would spark a discussion within the community,” says Juli Janovicz, One Book Two Villages coordinator. “I know I’ve found a good candidate for One Book Two Villages if I can’t get the selection out of my head and I want to share it with everyone I come in contact with around the village.”

In celebration of The Paris Wife, the Winnetka Library will host a Hemingway-inspired Moveable Feast on Sunday, July 15. The evening will feature Paris Noir jazz performed by singer Greta Pope and international cuisine. The menu will include bacon-wrapped dates and Spanish potato salad from Tapas Gitana, salmon tartare and leek tarts from Corner Cooks, and mini-apple pies and Americana deserts from B.C. Caters.

On July 19, the Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District will welcome author Paula McLain to town. Ms. McLain will be the guest of honor at an exclusive cocktail party at the Winnetka Community House, followed by a book lecture in Matz Hall. Ms. McLain will also be signing books at the library district’s booth at the Winnetka Sidewalk Sale on Friday, July 20.

Event information and tickets for all The Paris Wife events are available at www.OneBookTwoVillages.org.

Announcing the 2011 One Book Two Villages Title

Each year, library staff members search for the perfect book to designate as the One Book Two Villages adult selection. It is always a struggle to find the perfect book until the book emerges. After reading an advanced copy of Siobhan Fallon's book "You Know When the Men Are Gone", we knew it was the book. Fallon's tales of life on a contemporary American military base were inspired by her own experiences as an army wife living at Fort Hood, Texas, while her husband was deployed to Iraq for two tours of duty.  Fallon's book, an electrifying collection of interconnected short stories about domesticity and war, will be published on January 20, 2011.

With fidelity, compassion, and stunning honesty, Fallon's eight loosely linked stories take readers inside the homes, marriages, and families of that small segment of our society that deals daily with the emotional consequences of our ongoing wars. As in civilian life, there are extramarital affairs, health crises, teenage angst, financial stresses, and scrapes with the law, but all are heightened and distorted by the knowledge that the person you depend on most in the world is 5,000 miles from home and in harm's way.

"You Know When The Men Are Gone" has been showered with advance praise, included in Publisher Weekly's Spring 2011 First Fiction round-up of ten promising fiction debuts, and featured on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." The Winnetka-Northfield Public Library is excited to add a new honor to the book, as the 2011 One Book Two Villages title.

The Library District is pleased to welcome Ms. Fallon to The Book Stall at Chestnut Court at 7 p.m. on January 31. The event is free and open to the public.

Don't miss your opportunity to meet Ms. Fallon before her family is deployed to the Middle East.

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"You Know When the Men Are Gone" will be available on January 20.  Reserve your copy today!

Winnetka-Northfield Public Library District: www.winnetkalibrary.org/cgi-bin/branbist.pl?isbn=9780399157202

The Book Stall at Chestnut Court: http://bookstall.indiebound.com/book/9780399157202

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