Emma Donoghue: In Conversation with Manina Jones

November 17, 2020 at 7:00pm

The Words Festival and the London Public Library are pleased to welcome bestselling author and London's own Emma Donoghue, who will be joining us to talk about her new novel, The Pull of the Stars!

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and ROOM.

In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders-Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

This event is being hosted in partnership with the London Public Library.

Authors & Presenters

Manina Jones

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Manina Jones is the Chair of the Department of English at Western University.

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