Adult Book Club: “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” by Julie Alverz

This month’s book will be The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julie Alverz (256pages).

About the book: Celebrated writer, Alma Cruz, doesn’t want to end up like her novelist friend, whose struggle to write threatened her sanity. So she has the beautiful idea of burying her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
But the stories and characters have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma’s characters. The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried?

About the Author: Julia Alvarez, who left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten, is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine. In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

The Adult Book Club meets in-person at the Library on the second Friday of each month (this month is an exception). If you have questions about the Book Club, please email Linda Reimer: [email protected]

Check our calendar for future dates and book selections.