Fri, Sep 13
|Ithaca
From Sun to Sun with Kenneth Wishnia
Join PM Press at Autumn Leaves for our second event of the 2024 Ithaca is Books Festival, a reading and discussion of "From Sun to Sun" with author Kenneth Wishnia.
Time & Location
Sep 13, 2024, 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Ithaca, 115 E State St, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA
About the event
From Sun to Sun with Kenneth Wishnia Friday, September 13th, 8pm to 9pm
Join PM Press at Autumn Leaves for our second event of the 2024 Ithaca is Books Festival, a reading and discussion of "From Sun to Sun" with author Kenneth Wishnia. Co-sponsored by Cornell's Society for the Humanities.
From Sun to Sun presents two parallel stories separated by twenty-five centuries: The first, set in modern New York City, features a hardworking, smart-mouthed Latina investigator, Felicity Ortega Pérez, as she hunts for a missing person who holds the clue to an ancient mystery. Little does she realize how deep the criminality goes and what she will learn about her own hidden past.
The ancient story is a radical revision of the biblical Book of Ruth: When her husband dies under strange circumstances, Ruth must join the exiles returning to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple in order to secure a future for herself and her grieving mother-in-law, Naomi. Unfortunately, the returning exiles include religious leaders who plan to "purify" the land by expelling all the foreign women.
From Sun to Sun is a tale of love, devotion, and sacrifice depicting the challenges facing two determined women as they confront ignorance, hatred, and indifference in their pursuit of justice—a seemingly endless struggle in a time of social upheaval, fluid identities, and diverse cross-cultural complexities. This novel is about who gets to decide who's one of us and who's a foreigner, and what it takes to prove you belong.
Kenneth Wishnia's novels include 23 Shades of Black, which was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel and an Anthony for Best Paperback Original; Soft Money, a Library Journal Best Mystery of the Year; and Red House, a Washington Post Book World "Rave" Book of the Year. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Queens Noir, Long Island Noir, Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail, and elsewhere. He edited the Anthony Award–nominated anthology Jewish Noir and coedited Jewish Noir II with Chantelle Aimée Osman. He teaches writing, literature, and other deviant forms of thought at Suffolk Community College on Long Island.