An Afternoon with Author Courtney Miller Santo

Courtney Miller Santo will read from The Roots of the Olive Tree. A wine and cheese reception will begin at 2:30 and books will be available for selling and signing after the author’s presentation. Santo teaches creative writing at the University of Memphis, where she received her MFA. Although born and raised in Portland, Oregon, she's spent most of her adult life in the South.

Her book chronicles the Keller family, five generations of firstborn women—an unbroken line of daughters—living together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley of Northern California. Erin, the youngest, returns home suddenly, alone and pregnant, after two years abroad with an opera company. Her return and the arrival of the geneticist who has come to study the Keller family ignites explosive emotions that these women have kept buried and uncovers revelations that will shake them all to their roots.