Fiction

We welcome New York author Christopher X. Shade to read from his debut novel The Good Mother of Marseille. The novel is set in the summer of 2013, in the year of Marseille's designation as the European Capital of Culture. Americans wander and sightsee in this dangerous and impoverished yet seductive city. The Americans whose stories are told in this novel -- anthropology students Noémie and Corey, the couple from a small town in Alabama, the Colorado man with late-stage cancer, and a woman and her journalist husband -- put their Marseille experience in the context of their own histories. Hovering on the fringe are the Marseillais themselves -- the shopkeepers, artists, and café waiters -- following the rhythm of European street life. The book is a love letter to the…