Wed 3/3 @ 7PM
Coventry Village bookstore Mac’s Backs and the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Library’s Coventry branch have joined together for a virtual author event with Alabama-based author Pete Beatty.
Born and raised in northeast Ohio, he’s lived mostly in New York and Chicago as an adult, although he did move back to Cleveland briefly. But he’s used his hometown as the setting for his debut novel Cuyahoga. It’s not a Cuyahoga we’d recognize or that he knows firsthand, since it’s set in 1837.
The sprawling, satirical story is based on reality — the building of a bridge to connect the “twin cities” of Ohio City and Cleveland, once distinct entities. But the central character, Big Son, is a grandiose, mythological creation in the mold of Paul Bunyan as he pursues opportunity in the nascent city.
“The resulting misadventures involve elderly terrorists, infrastructure collapse, steamboat races, wild pigs, and multiple ruined weddings,” the books’ promotion relates. “The Greek classics and the Bible alongside nods to Looney Tunes, Charles Portis, and Flannery O’Connor, Pete Beatty has written a rollicking revisionist (mid)Western with universal themes of family and fate—an old, weird America that feels brand new.”
This event is free and open to all. Register to get the Zoom link here. The book is available at Mac’s Backs, which is currently open daily from noon-6pm.