About this Event
Moderating this discussion is New York-based cook, writer, and author Alison Roman. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
Can’t make the event?
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by Sept. 8 to request.
Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]
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Abandoned by her mother in New York, sixteen-year-old Geraldine falls under the influence of three women, each seeking to form her in their image.
"Heavy Cream is funny, deeply felt, and positively effervescent, brimming with life and color and texture—I was repeatedly struck by its humor, its compassion, and its candor." —Claire Lombardo
Growing up on the road, it has always been the two of them, locked in dysfunction. Homeschooled, Gerry hasn’t learned much math. Instead, her mother has taught her how to spend the day at a motel’s swimming pool without being a guest or how to dodge paying extra for the chicken on a Caesar salad.
Gerry learns how to pass and adapt, but when she is abandoned in the city, Gerry finds herself in the care of three very different women, each intent on shaping her into competing and incompatible selves. First, there is her mother’s old college friend Bonnie, who lives in a world of country clubs and chintzy domesticity. Then there is Nell, her mother’s estranged sister and a successful artist who insists on ambition and self-invention. And finally Finley, an old-money socialite who ushers Gerry into the rarefied world of Manhattan privilege.
A coming-of-age tale that explores unconventional forms of motherhood and caretaking, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s new novel is both a charming comedy of manners and a deeply probing look at the complexities of love, mental illness, and inheritance, and one young woman’s eccentric path to selfhood.
Photo credit: Sylvie Rosokoff
Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is the author of Alice Sadie Celine and Red Riding Hood, a #1 New York Times bestseller published worldwide in thirty-eight editions and fifteen languages. She is the editor of Hauser & Wirth’s The Artist’s Library for Ursula magazine and an associate editor at A Public Space.
Alison Roman is a New York-based cook, writer, and author of the recently released cookbook, Something from Nothing as well as the New York Times best-selling cookbooks Sweet Enough, Nothing Fancy and Dining In. She’s the creator of the Home Movies series on YouTube, the author of A Newsletter, and the creator of the Solicited Advice podcast. In 2023, she opened First Bloom, a small grocery store in the Western Catskills full of local produce, near and far pantry staples and the best granola you’ve ever had. A second location is set to open in Brooklyn later this year. In 2025, she added A Very Good Tomato Sauce to the shelves, coming soon to a grocery store near you.
Event venue & nearby stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
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