Kira Salak

Kira Salak presents The White Mary. Kira has won the PEN Award for Journalism and appeared five times in Best American Travel Writing. She is a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine and was the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea; her nonfiction account of that trip was ... (more)a New York Times Notable Book of 2001. She has a PhD in English and her fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices and other publications.

In PEN Award-winning journalist Kira Salak's sweeping, stunning debut novel, The White Mary (Henry Holt & Company), a young woman journeys deep into the untamed jungle, wrestling with love and loss, trauma and healing, faith and redemption.

Upon returning from a harrowing assignment in the Congo where she was kidnapped by rebel soldiers, Marika Vecera, an accomplished journalist, learns that a man she has long admired, Pulitzer-winning war correspondent Robert Lewis, has committed suicide. To her, Lewis always represented strength and courage ... (more)in the face of the world's worst tragedies and Marika wants—needs—to understand what could have pushed him over the edge. After deciding to abandon magazine work for a while to write his biography, she receives a curious letter: a missionary claims to have seen Lewis in the remote jungle of Papua New Guinea. Astounded Marika sets off on a journey to discover the truth in one of the world's most exotic and unknown lands. Kira Salak won the PEN Award for Journalism and appeared five times in Best American Travel Writing. She is a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine and the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea. Her nonfiction account of the trip, Four Corners, was a New York Times Notable Book.
"With The White Mary, journalist Kira Salak makes a stunning debut as a novelist. This is a story whose beauty and power sweeps you along, like the jungle rivers that bear her heroine into the heart of New Guinea in search of a vanished American. In the tradition of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim and Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter, The White Mary is a superb adventure tale that explores the human soul, a tale of a physical journey that frames a spiritual quest for love and meaning in a world sadly deficient in both."—Philip Caputo

Highly regarded for her nonfiction books and the travels they chronicle—The Cruelest Journey, Four Corners—Kira Salak makes this welcome first appearance here to read from her debut novel, The White Mary (Henry Holt).

Marika Vecera, an accomplished war reporter, has dedicated her life to helping the world’s oppressed and
forgotten. Returning form a harrowing assignment in the Congo where she was kidnapped by rebel soldiers,
Marika learns that a man she has always admired from afar, Pulitzer-prize winning war ... (more)correspondent
Robert Lewis, has committed suicide. Stunned, she abandons her magaine work to write Lewis’s
biography. But when Marika finds a curious letter from a missionary claiming to have seen Lewis in the
remote jungle of Papua New Guinea, she embarks on her ultimate journey to one of the world’s most
exotic and unknown lands on her quest to learn the truth about Lewis—and about herself, along the way.
Fri., Aug. 1, 10:00 pm @ Left Bank Books
MIDNIGHT RELEASE PARTY—Breaking Dawn
Twilight tempted the imagination. New Moon made readers thirsty for more. Eclipse turned the saga into a
worldwide phenomenon. And now, the book that everyone has been waiting for... Breaking Dawn, the final
book in the #1 bestselling Twilight Saga, will take your breath away. New York Times bestselling author
Stephanie Meyer returns to her teen vampire Twilight Saga with this much-anticipated fourth book in the
series. In this riveting novel, questions will be answered and the fate of Bella and Edward will be revealed.
Left Bank Books is throwing a Breaking Dawn Midnight Release Party for the last book in the Twilight
series. Teens can enter a vampire fashion show, take paranormal prom pictures, eat bloody cupcakes,
partcipate in Twilight Trivia, and more!
We’ll be doing a raffle for a $100 gift certificate to Left Bank Books. Raffle tickets are $1 each.
Reserve your copy of Breaking Dawn today! Books will go on sale at 12:01am on August 2 at the party.
Wed., Aug.