Washington journalist Ashley E. Sweeney will be touring Southeast to promote her debut novel, “Eliza Waite.” Sweeney will hold booksignings at three Southeast bookstores as well as a book talk at the downtown Juneau library.
Released by She Writes Press, “Eliza Waite” is part diary, part recipe file and part Gold Rush history. Polly Myers with the University of Washington History Department has called it “a lively and compelling narrative of one woman’s quest to navigate the social turmoil of the late 19th century Pacific Northwest” and Booklist has praised it as “a beautifully written work of historical fiction … Readers will be immersed in Eliza’s world, which Sweeney has so authentically and skillfully rendered.”
About the book: “In 1898, a woman’s place was in the home, but for Eliza Waite, who has shamed her parents and who also recently lost her husband and only child, there is no “home,” only refuge on a remote island in the San Juan Islands of Washington State.
“With a name change and no small dose of courage, Eliza boards the SS Ketchikan to the Klondike in search of her future, joining a rough crowd of fortune hunters, businessmen, gold diggers, con men, and prostitutes. She lands in Skagway, where she plans to start a bakery. With the support of new friends from unlikely quarters, Eliza flourishes… She has great hope for her new life — until a familiar face haunts the streets of Skagway, threatening to undermine all she has built.”
Sweeney will be signing books from 10 a.m.-noon on Monday, Aug. 8, at Parnassus Books in Ketchikan; from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 9, at Hearthside Books in the Nugget Mall; and from 1-3 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 10, at Skaguay News Depot & Books. She will hold a book talk at 6 p.m. on Aug. 9 at the downtown Juneau library.
