ELLIS AVERY
Monday, January 29 at 7:30 p.m.

Debut novelist Ellis Avery is here from her New York home with The Teahouse Fire (Riverhead), a rich first novel set in Japan in the mid-19th century. This is a tale of West meets East, a young girl sent from New York to Kyoto to be with her missionary uncle, this at the time Japan started opening to more Westerners. Then her uncle dies in a fire—and life in Japan takes a dramatic turn. "If one could be a fly on the wall of a Japanese tea room in the late nineteenth century, what amazing things one might overhear. In Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire, aesthetic rules vie with politics, sex, and human feeling. Avery has whipped up a heady brew." - Liza Dalby. "Reading Ellis Avery's The Teahouse Fire, for me, is like attending seasons of elegant tea parties—each one resplendent with character and drama. Delicious." - Maxine Hong Kingston.

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