Author Event: Polly Stewart in Conversation with Eli Cranor

Join us as Wednesday, June 14 at 6:30 pm we welcome author Polly Stewart for her Little Rock stop on her book tour for her novel, The Good Ones in conversation with her friend and Arkansas author, Eli Cranor.

RSVP for the event HERE.

"Polly Stewart's stunning novel The Good Ones is reminiscent of Gone Girl with elements of Yellowjackets thrown in. This book dives straight into the heart of Appalachia, unearthing teenage tensions and full-grown fears which connect in ways I never saw coming. Fans of Megan Abbott will rejoice in this intricately textured addition to the rural noir canon." — Eli Cranor, author of Don't Know Tough and Ozark Dogs

An engrossing work of literary suspense that illuminates the push and pull of female friendship and the costs of being good when the rules for women begin to chafe.

The last time Nicola Bennett saw Lauren Ballard she was scraping a key along the side of a new cherry-red Chevy Silverado. That was the night before her friend mysteriously vanished from her home, leaving a bloodstained washcloth and signs of a struggle—as well as her grieving husband and young daughter—behind.

Now, nearly twenty years later, Nicola, newly unemployed and still haunted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, is returning to her Appalachian hometown. For Nicola, Tyndall County has remained frozen in time. Everywhere she turns she’s reminded of Lauren. Yet shockingly, her former friends and neighbors have all moved on. Drawn to stories of missing girls, Nicola obsessively searches the internet, hoping to discover a clue to Lauren’s ultimate fate.

Driven by a desperate need to know what happened to her friend, Nicola takes a job in her hometown, determined to uncover any bit of information, any small clue, that can help. Deep down she knows the answers are tucked in the hollows and valleys of this small Blue Ridge county. As secrets come to light and the truth begins to unravel, will Nicola finally find release and break free of the past—or lose herself completely to unanswered questions from her adolescence?

Polly Stewart grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where she still lives. She graduated from Hollins University and has an MFA in fiction and a PhD in British literature from Washington University in St. Louis. Her short fiction has appeared in literary collections and journals, including Best New American Voices, The Best American Mystery Stories, Epoch, and the Alaska Quarterly Review. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, Crime Reads, and Poets & Writers, among other publications.