Spokane author Jess Walter has been showered with critical praise for his latest novel, Beautiful Ruins, which opens on the Italian coastline in 1962 when a young innkeeper sees a vision in white, a woman on a boat. Shes a young American starlet. Shes dying. Their encounter will rattle across continents shaping the next 50 years and nearly as many lives. Walters love story, released in June, features characters like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.
Walter is the author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets; the National Book Award finalist The Zero; the Edgar Award-winning Citizen Vince; and the New York Times Notable Book Over Tumbled Graves. He will read and sign copies of his books at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at BookPeople, 521 S. Main St., Moscow. A no-host bar opens at 6:30 p.m.
Beautiful Ruins
by Jess Walter
Harper
352 pgs., $25.99