James J. Patterson Reads from MELANIE’S SONG on Latest LFTRR
The new mystery novel by ASP's Joanna Biggar is given the Patterson treatment in Episode 11 of Live from the Reading Room
“Melanie’s Song is an unputdownable, riveting feat of storytelling.”
Set in the era of Woodstock and Watergate, Melanie’s Song centers on a young woman’s mysterious disappearance, and on her friend’s determined search for her.
Melanie, who fled her marriage to a straight-laced classical musician in order to hitch-hike to Woodstock and San Francisco, was last seen at a commune in the California hills. Rumors abound: that she took up with a Black radical; that she had his child; that she and her lover, armed, ran a bank heist a la Patty Hearst; that she developed a mystical gift for spiritual healing; that she died in a possible accidental, possibly staged commune fire.
Trying to sift truth from invention pulls her friend, the young reporter, J.J., into the underbelly of the sexual and social revolutions of the 60s and early 70s, where she encounters corrupt cops, paranoid hippies, activists, mystics, drug-runners,and most astonishingly, Melanie’s own parents. Risking her job, her connections, her life, J.J. follows Melanie’s trail, determined to find out what happened to her once-compliant friend now turned, it seems, into a rebel angel.
Tim Cahill calls ‘Navigating the Divide’ the “Most Rewarding Book I’ve Read This Year”
Learn what famed travel writer, Tim Cahill, has to say about Linda Watanabe McFerrin’s new ASP Legacy Book, “Navigating the Divide.”
Joanna Biggar Reveals the Heart’s Center of her Newest Novel
After 2015’s That Paris Year which followed a group of young women on their year-abroad at the Sorbonne—their youthful flings as well as their many rites of adulthood— Joanna Biggar is bringing its spiritual sequel Melanie’s Song overseas to her own hometown in the United States. Set in Califonia amid the cultural revolution of the late 60s early 70s, Melanie’s Song, while not a direct sequel to That Paris Year shares many of its characters and its familiar, lavish lyrical style. In MS, J.J., the protagonist of That Paris Year, a young reporter, is on a quest to find her missing friend, Melanie (the archetypal shy scholarly type and another character from TPY) who fled her marriage to a straight-laced classical musician in order to hitch-hike to Woodstock and San Francisco.
What Does Patricia Bracewell Have to Say about “Melanie’s Song”?
What does bestselling historical fiction author, Patricia Bracewell, think of Joanna Biggar’s latest novel, “Melanie’s Song”?