UPDATE: We are going to discuss Good Night, Irene when we get together for dinner. So this will be like a bonus book club meeting. You are welcome to come to this event, and welcome to join us for dinner whether or not you read this book. But because the author will be speaking specifically about this book, and we will be discussing it as a book club when we get together for dinner, we recommend reading the book before this event.
Free event, but tickets are required.
Get your free tickets here:
https://www.changinghands.com/event/july2024/luis-alberto-urrea
AMAZING NEWS! Luis Alberto Urrea will be here in Tempe and we'll be able to see him in person.
Tracy is the leader of the neighborhood group's book club, the Armchair Adventure Book Club. Luis Alberto Urrea is one of Tracy's all-time favorite authors! One of the very first books the book club read was Urrea's The Devil's Highway. (This was our December 2022 book club selection.)
The neighborhood potluck group and its book club (the Armchair Adventure Book Club) is going to go to the author event at Changing Hands Bookstore to see Urrea live as he marks the paperback release of his latest book: Good Night, Irene.
We will gather at 5:30 PM for dinner at Rubio's Coastal Grill, which is right near by. At 6:30 PM we will go to the book store for the author event at Changing Hands.
The restaurant address is: 1712 E Guadalupe Rd, Tempe, AZ 85283
The book store address is: 6428 S McClintock Dr, Tempe, AZ 85283
The restaurant is 0.1 miles from the book store.
About the Author:
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonfiction The Devil's Highway, now in its thirty-fourth paperback printing, Luis Alberto Urrea is the author of numerous other works of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction, including the national bestsellers The Hummingbird's Daughter and The House of Broken Angels, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, among many other honors, he lives outside Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois Chicago.
About Urrea's new book Good Night, Irene
This New York Times bestselling novel tells an exhilarating World War II epic that chronicles an extraordinary young woman's heroic frontline service in the Red Cross.
In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military vehicles called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.
After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a courageous American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.
Taking as inspiration his mother's own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women's heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea's "gifts as a storyteller are prodigious" (NPR).