The third annual Saratoga Book Festival took place this past weekend. Heartfelt congratulations to the many people who made it happen. Over four days, more than 25 festival events featured big stage interviews, more intimate conversations, and panel discussions. It was hard to choose which events to go to. Many intrigued me. The sessions I attended were varied and I saw authors I was familiar with as well as those who were new to me.

I want to share with you some of the books featured and introduce you to some of the writers that were showcased. I plan to read them and hope you’ll give them a look.

First off, the big headline events:

Wally Lamb opened the Festival at the beautiful Spa Little Theater. He was interviewed by Donna Liquori from the Times Union. Many of you might be familiar with his very famous, Oprah picked books such as She’s Come Undone, We are Water, The Hour I First Believed. He has also been teaching writing in prison and edited two books of essays written by women incarcerated in Connecticut’s only prison for women.

After a fast moving interview covering some of the metaphors that link his books as well as delighting the audience with his Oprah moment, the making of the film version of his book, I Know This Much is True, with Mark Ruffalo and his time spent teaching writing to inmates in prison, he read from his upcoming book, The River Is Waiting (Jan 2024).

It was a long reading of the book’s opening. As the story begins, the reader is introduced to a young father who has lost his job, is the primary caretaker of his two year old twins, and in his depression about both his present and bleak future has come to rely on alcohol and pills to get him through his days. As an ordinary morning unfolds, he is getting his twins ready for care at their grandma’s house. She is taking care of them because he has lied about job prospects. The routine of putting the twins in the car is disrupted and yes… you know what is coming. He runs over and kills one of his babies. He goes to the trial where he is found guilty of manslaughter and led to prison.

Anyone familiar with Lamb’s books knows they are not emotionally easy but the characters’ journeys are complicated and relatable. This book will undoubtedly join his impressive work in that regard.

The other well known writer who was featured was novelist and memoirist, Dani Shapiro. I had seen her several years ago at the Miami Book Festival right after her memoir, Inheritance, came out and loved hearing all the backstory to that book. The sometimes painful honesty that is a hallmark of her books is also part of her public discussions.

Before I realized she was going to be at the Festival, I read her new novel, Signal Fires, and was blown away by it on so many levels—the story, the characters, the flow, the language. It is was a double gift because I listened to the audio read by Ms Shapiro herself. Very compelling.

Jonathan Santlofer was the interviewer. An impressive presence himself, he was featured at the first Saratoga Festival when his book, The Last Mona Lisa, came out. He is a notable mystery writer and artist who is always very well prepared, articulate, and takes the dialogue in interesting directions. Their conversation was very thoughtful and gave the audience new insight into the subject matter and the winding road the writing of a novel may take.

Briefly, Signal Fires is a story of two families who live on the same street in a suburban neighborhood. While at first, they are only connected by proximity through time and story, their connections are life changing. It’s about the losses, deaths, and secrets that inform their lives. The characters are all multilayered and through the lens Shapiro gives us, we understand them and (perhaps, with the exception of one!) come to relate to parts of them. Add to that the rhythm and music of the prose. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

It’s new for me to suggest books I have not yet read, but the conversation around them was persuasive enough for me to take this leap. I can’t wait to read them.

Discussed in a session New Novels Set in Upstate New York, I am eager to read Karin Lin-Greenbergs’s book, You Are Here. Lin-Greenberg is currently an associate professor in English at Siena College. She has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships such as the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Wesleyan Writers Conference, and MacDowell Writers Colony.

The blurb from her book:

The inhabitants of a small town have long found that their lives intersect at one focal point: the local shopping mall. But business is down, stores are closing, and as the institution breathes its last gasp, the people inside it dream of something different, something more. As a once-bustling mall prepares to shut its doors for the final time, the residents must reckon with a shocking act that forces them to reevaluate who they are and what they want.

Every book festival needs to have a session on thrillers and this one was no exception. Here we have a new book, The Writer’s Retreat by Julia Bartz. Of course, I would be pulled in by this one!

Julia Bartz is a Brooklyn-based writer and practicing therapist. Her fiction writing has appeared in The South Dakota Review, InDigest Magazine, and more. The Writing Retreat is her first novel.

The Description:

A book deal to die for.

Five attendees are selected for a month-long writing retreat at the remote estate of Roza Vallo, the controversial high priestess of feminist horror. Alex, a struggling writer, is thrilled. Upon arrival, they discover they must complete an entire novel from scratch, and the best one will receive a seven-figure publishing deal. Alex’s long-extinguished dream now seems within reach. But then the women begin to die. Trapped, terrified yet still desperately writing, it is clear there is more than a publishing deal at stake at Blackbriar Estate. Alex must confront her own demons – and finish her novel – to save herself.

Molly Prentiss discussed her book, Old Flame at the session discussing books about choices women confront. She has been a Writer in Residence at The Blue Mountain Center, Vermont Studio Center and at the Workspace program the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and received the Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Aspen Institute.

Old Flame:

The blurb:

Emily writes for women’s catalogs for a living, but she’d rather be writing books. She has a handsome photographer boyfriend, but she actively wonders how and when they will eventually hurt each other. Her best work friend Megan is her lifeline, until Megan is abruptly laid off. When her world is further upended by an unplanned pregnancy, Emily is forced to make tough decisions that will change her life forever. What will she sacrifice from her old life to make room for a new one? What fires will she be forced to extinguish, and which will keep burning? Old Flame is a story about the essential—and often existential—choices that define a woman’s life at every level.

The last suggestion I have sounds like such a timely exploration of our values and the political mores and disparate viewpoints that have remained consistent through the evolution of our democracy. Tom Piazza discussed his new book, The AUBURN CONFERENCE in the session called Of Writers and Renegades.

Piazza  is a celebrated novelist, essayist, short fiction writer and writer on American music. He’s written twelve books and was principal writer for the HBO drama series TREME and the winner of a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey. 

The Auburn Conference:

What if a who’s who of American literary greats attend a festival in upstate New York in 1883?Imagine Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, and Harriet Beecher Stowe are in the same room not only to discuss their work but also to argue about the future of our nation twenty years after the end of the Civil War.

Sounds very timely to me.

It was hard to choose from the big list but I tried to vary it. It’s lovely to be introduced to books we may otherwise never hear about. I hope one or two strikes your fancy.

Happy Reading!

Jan Marin Tramontano has given us a novel of love and disenchantment, of dashed dreams and sustained hope. Sexy, unflinching, pinpoint accurate in its portrayal of parenting, this is an exhilarating work.—James Robison, novelist, screenwriter, poet Recipient of Rosenthal, Whiting, and Pushcart Awards

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Smashwords, your local indie bookseller, and jantramontano.com