Meet the Author Elisabeth Harden

Date of Program:  Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 7:00 PM

Visit the Enfield Public Library on Wednesday, February 5th at 7:00 PM to meet author Elisabeth Harden and discuss her book, Pissing Match.

Pissing Match, takes place in the small New England town of Barlow, centering on the life of Kansas Delano, a fourteen-going-on-forty year old, who is unwittingly at the center of an emotional wrestling match between her entrepreneurial parents, Vince and Natalee.  A nagging suspicion of infidelity and a single act of violence drive the parents to opposite ends of their businesses’ shared parking lot, creating a literal fault line in the family’s life.  While her apathetic brother begins working in their father’s pizza parlor, Kansas gets roped into servitude at her mother’s coffee shop, where Natalee, in full view of her estranged spouse, plays to an admiring crowd of divorcees, dilettantes and dirt-bags-with her eye on one rich and robust prospect, Dane Olmes.  In the midst of chaos, Kansas wages her own struggle to better define faith and fairness, and rectify the injustice of those who should be her mentors rather than her misery.  Ignoring the local gossipers and leaning hard on new friendships that stem from two unlikely places, Kansas musters the grit and grace to challenge the misguided adults in her life in the hope of derailing their march toward self-destruction. 

Author Elisabeth Harden grew up in Simsbury, Connecticut and attended the University of Arizona where she focused on English and creative writing classes.  She later earned her degree in Social Work at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven and completed graduate studies in Criminal Justice.  Currently she works for the Connecticut Department of Correction as a counselor and is working on her second novel.  About her novel, Pissing Match, she states, “There’s a little bit of all of us in here.  It could be any, and is every small town.  Human nature is not confined by boundary markers and stone walls.”

Copies of Pissing Match will be on hand for sale and signing.  All programs at the Enfield Public Library are free and all are welcome.  To register for this program, please visit the Circulation Desk or call 860-763-7512.  For more information on Library programs, please visit our website: www.enfieldpubliclibrary.org.