Miles Harvey and Emily Gray Tedrowe - "The King of Confidence" and "The Talented Miss Farwell" - Virtual Event

Miles Harvey and Emily Gray Tedrowe will discuss The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch and The Talented Miss Farwell.

Presented in partnership with Chicago Public Library

Virtual event: YouTube Live Stream

About the books: The King of Confidence tells the fascinating but largely forgotten story of James Strang. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years as leader of a religious sect in Michigan, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.

The Talented Miss Farwell was inspired by the true story of the woman who pulled off the biggest municipal fraud in US History. Miss Rebecca Farwell has made a killing at Christie’s in New York City, selling a portion of her extraordinary art collection for a rumored 900 percent profit. Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely—a quiet single woman known as Becky, who works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller. No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky, but what Pierson doesn't see--and can never discover--is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, "borrowed" funds used to finance her art habit.

About the authors: Miles Harvey is the author of the national and international bestseller The Island of Lost Maps and the recipient of a Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship. His book Painter in A Savage Land was named a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year. He teaches at DePaul University.

Emily Gray Tedrowe is the Chicago-based author of the novels Blue Stars and Commuters. She has received an Illinois Arts Council award as well as fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Sewanee Writers Conference. A frequent book reviewer for USA Today as well as other publications, Tedrowe also writes essays, interviews, and short stories.