Memoirs & Coffee Book Group

The next meeting of Bernardsville Public Library’s book discussion group, Memoirs and Coffee, will be held on Tuesday, March 25 at 10:30 am in the library’s Community Room.  Pat Kennedy-Grant, Readers’ Services Manager for the library, will lead the discussion of “Son of a Gun: A Memoir” (2013) by Justin St. Germain.  [The author will not be present.] 

"Son of a Gun" is the chronicle of a mother-son relationship that is also an unflinching account of a murder and its aftermath.  St. Germain's mother, Debbie, was killed in her remote trailer, apparently by her fifth husband, in 2001.  In his memoir, her son attempts to understand his mother by confronting people from his past.  By examining the police records, he tries to make sense of his mother’s life and death.

The book was a finalist for the 2013 Barnes & Noble Discover Award in Nonfiction and was named a Best Book of 2013 by Amazon.com, Library Journal, BookPage, and Salon; it was also an Oprah.com Book of the Week and The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice.

Julia Keller of NPR called the book, “Gritty, enthralling … St. Germain has created a work of austere, luminous beauty … by the end of the book, you know his mother, even though you never met her.  And like the author, you will mourn her forever."

Justin St. Germain was born in Philadelphia in 1981. He attended the University of Arizona and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He lives in Albuquerque and teaches at the University of New Mexico.

There is no charge, and no registration is needed to join the discussion.  Call the library at 766-0118 for more information.