BookPeople Presents: Rowan Beaird - Tenderness

Fri Jul 31 2026 at 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm UTC-05:00

BookPeople | Austin

BookPeople
Publisher/HostBookPeople
BookPeople Presents: Rowan Beaird - Tenderness
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BookPeople welcomes Rowan Beaird to celebrate the release of Tenderness.
About this Event

Please welcome Rowan Beaird to celebrate Tenderness!

This event is free and open to the public.

  • Start time: 7:00 P.M.
  • Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
  • Location: The second floor of BookPeople.

The author will be signing and personalizing copies of the book after the speaking portion of the event.

  • To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.
  • For high volume events, post-talk signing lines can become very long. For such events, we recommend arriving and checking in to the event early as that will get you into an earlier signing group.

Guidelines:

  • Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis and is not guaranteed.
  • If you have any accessibility concerns regarding seating, please contact [email protected]
  • If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
  • All event guidelines are subject to change.
  • BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
  • There will not be a live stream or recording available.

About the book:

From the beloved author of The Divorcées comes a novel set in the 1970s during an island wedding, where the bride has recently left a sinister cult that might still be trailing her

On a remote island off the coast of Virginia, family and friends gather to celebrate the wedding of Shay O’Connor and Andrew Pruitt. From the moment the guests arrive, all they can whisper about is the bride, who recently left the headline-making cult Synanon. Why would someone like Shay, an Ivy League graduate with a wealthy, doting fiancée, join Synanon? And has she really escaped their grasp?

Told from the interwoven perspectives of Shay’s brother William, her longtime friend Joel, and Shay herself, Tenderness is a slow-burn mystery that excavates dark family histories and romantic regrets. As the wedding day approaches, Joel and William pull at the loose threads of Shay’s story, and it becomes clear there is an even greater threat on the island than the secrets each character is keeping from one another.

Set in the tinderbox of the 1970s, Tenderness is a lit match, bringing hidden truths to light and asking if we can ever see ourselves or the people we love for who they truly are.

About the author:

Rowan Beaird's fiction has appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and Gulf Coast. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter. The Divorcées is her first novel.

By purchasing a book from BookPeople, you are not only supporting a local, independent business – you’re showing publishers that they should continue sending authors to BookPeople.

Thank you for supporting Rowan Beaird and your local independent bookstore!

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, United States

Tickets

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