Leni Zumas with Danya Kukafka — 'Wolf Bells: A Novel'

Third Place Books welcomes author Leni Zumas to celebrate her new book, —a biting, lyrical novel about an intergenerational group home run by an ex-musician determined to make a place for those without one. Leni will be joined in conversation by writer and literary agent Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution.

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The acclaimed author of Red Clocks returns with a biting, lyrical novel about an intergenerational group home run by an ex-musician determined to make a place for those without one.

On a bluff above a river rises The House, where elderly and disabled residents live alongside young people who help out in exchange for free rent. The community is led by a former punk singer who never wanted to be responsible for anyone yet now finds herself the caretaker of this precarious collection of lives. It’s not a family, exactly, but it’s got the complicated, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, dynamics of kinship.

When two kids—Nola and her little cousin James—show up on The House’s back porch in need of refuge, the whole experiment is thrown into question. All are welcome here, or that was the idea. But the authorities are looking for these children, and The House’s finances are teetering on the edge.

Zumas’s long-anticipated third novel wrestles with America’s crisis of care in a taut, aching, polyphonic tale that moves as fast as the crackling comebacks that fly between The House’s residents over breakfast. As the rules of the outside world start to press in on this safe haven, readers will find themselves asking, what would the world look like if everyone had a place to belong?

Leni Zumas was a finalist for the 2021 John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Her bestselling novel Red Clocks won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the Neukom Award for Speculative Fiction. The novel was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and was named a Best Book of 2018 by The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and the New York Public Library. Vulture called it one of the “100 Most Important Books of the 21st Century So Far.” Zumas’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Granta, Guernica, The Cut, Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives in Oregon and teaches in the creative writing program at Portland State University. (Photo credit: Luca Dipierro)

Danya Kukafka is the author of the bestselling novels NOTES ON AN EXECUTION and GIRL IN SNOW. Her books have been reviewed favorably in outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. Danya works as a literary agent with Trellis Literary Management.

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Third Place Books Ravenna, 6504 20th Avenue Northeast, Seattle, United States