Modern Voices Reading and Discussion Group
The Modern Voices Reading and Discussion Group was created by popular demand from readers who want to participate in a daytime group. Modern Voices meets monthly on the third Tuesday at noon in the meeting room of the main library. The group reads and discusses books of all kinds, including fiction and nonfiction. Everyone is welcome to join the discussion. Bring your lunch or indulge in one of the treats provided by the Friends of the Albany Library.
Disappearing Earth
Join us on Tuesday,
December 17 @ noon
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the Kamchatka peninsula at the northeastern edge of Russia, two girls--sisters, eight and eleven--go missing. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Taking us through a year in Kamchatka, Disappearing Earth enters with astonishing emotional acuity the worlds of a cast of richly drawn characters, all connected by the crime: a witness, a neighbor, a detective, a mother. We are transported to vistas of rugged beauty--densely wooded forests, open expanses of tundra, soaring volcanoes, and the glassy seas that border Japan and Alaska--and into a region as complex as it is alluring, where social and ethnic tensions have long simmered, and where outsiders are often the first to be accused.
In a story as propulsive as it is emotionally engaging, and through a young writer's virtuosic feat of empathy and imagination, this powerful novel brings us to a new understanding of the intricate bonds of family and community, in a Russia unlike any we have seen before.
About the Author