Reif Larsen will be at Off Square Books to read and sign copies of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet.
Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is an unusual boy, in an unusual family, with a heavy, secret burden. Twelve years old and living on a ranch in Montana, his father is the quintessential cowboy, rugged and taciturn. His mother, a brilliant beetle entomologist, has devoted years to looking for a beetle, which might be mythical. His sister, a teenage drama queen, is dying to escape this rural ranch, and his older brother, the beloved son, is dead. T.S. is hopeless as a cowboy, but is a gifted cartographer and diagram designer. Everything in his life is examined and charted in one of hundreds of notebooks he keeps. When the Smithsonian calls to offer T.S., who they believe to be an adult, an award for his work he sets off alone on an incredible adventure cross-country to Washington. Many of his drawings find their way onto the pages of this inventive novel about a young boy, heartbroken and adrift as he gets an education in the ways of the world while maintaining his own innocence. CFR
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A boundary-leaping debut tracing a gifted young map maker’s attempt to understand the ways of the world