Join us Sat., May 20, 1 pm as Deno Trakas discusses and signs copies of his book Messenger from Mystery (Story River Books, pb., 240 pp., $20).
Messenger from Mystery features English graduate student Jason “Jay” Nichols, a third-generation Greek American on the cusp of his transition into adulthood and from student to teacher. When the Iranian hostage crisis begins while Jay is teaching students from Iran, he realizes that his understanding of geopolitical conflict is naive and superficial.
Like the award-winning film Argo, Messenger from Mystery harks back to the difficult final years of the Carter administration and looks closely at the hostage crisis, which captured the attention of the world for 444 days, garnered its own news show, ensured the defeat of Carter and the victory of Reagan, and frayed any American confidence regained after Vietnam and Watergate. A story of love, politics, terrorism, and heroism, Messenger from Mystery mixes accurate, fascinating history with convincing, engaging imagination.
Deno Trakas is the Laura and Winston Hoy Professor of English and director of the writing center at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He has published fiction and poetry in journals and anthologies, two chapbooks of poems, and a memoir entitled Because Memory Isn’t Eternal: A Story of Greeks in Upstate South Carolina. Trakas is a five-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project Prize and a recipient of the South Carolina Academy of Authors Fellowship in Fiction. Messenger from Mystery is his first novel.
Post a Comment