Allison Buccola - "The Ascent" - M. Todd Henderson

Allison Buccola will discuss The Ascent. She will be joined in discussion by M. Todd Henderson. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion. 

At the Co-op. 

RSVP Here (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required). 

About the book: What would you do if the past showed up on your doorstep? A woman who grew up in a cult must decide if she can trust the stranger claiming to have answers to the dark mysteries of her childhood in this irresistible thriller.

For decades, the whereabouts of The Fifteen has been an unsolved mystery. All the members of this reclusive commune outside Philadelphia vanished twenty years ago, except for one: a twelve-year-old girl found wandering alone on the side of the road.

In the years since that morning, Lee Burton has tried to put the pain of her past behind her, building a new identity for herself with a doting husband and seven-month-old daughter, Lucy. But motherhood is proving a bigger challenge than she anticipated. She doesn’t want to let Lucy out of her sight even for a moment. She can’t return to work. She’s not sleeping, and she has started spiraling into paranoia.

Then a stranger shows up on her doorstep, offering answers to all of Lee’s questions about her past—if Lee could only trust that this woman is who she says she is. Can Lee keep her safe, stable life? Or will new revelations about “the cult that went missing” shatter everything? In The Ascent, Allison Buccola has crafted a nerve-rattling thriller about motherhood, identity, and the truths we think we know about our families.

About the author: Allison Buccola is the author of The Ascent and Catch Her When She Falls. She has a JD from the University of Chicago and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and their two young children.

About the interlocutor: M. Todd Henderson was the biggest baby born in Tennessee in 1970. A professor at the University of Chicago, he is renowned as being the tallest law professor on Earth. Prior to becoming an academic, he worked as a designer of dams, a judicial clerk, a Supreme Court lawyer, and a management consultant. He lives in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife and three children.