BOVINA — Jennifer Kabat, Lucy Sante, and musician G Lucas Crane celebrate Kabat’s new book, Nightshining: A Memoir in Four Floods at Putt Putt Van Winkle, the magical miniature golf course along the Little Delaware in Bovina.
Nightshining tells a story of floods, geoengineering, and the climate crisis. Her first year in Margaretville, New York, Kabat wakes to a rain-swollen stream and waves crashing at her door. This is far from the first—and hardly the worst—disaster to devastate the village. She dives deeper into the history of the town’s deluges, discovering it was the site of Cold War weather experimentation. She traces connections across history, following a technology that spirals up from a 1950 flood in her town to the Vietnam War, the Reagan presidency, and a present day “fix” for climate change. She encounters unlikely characters along the way, including two scientists at General Electric: Vincent Schaefer, who never finished high school, and Kurt
Vonnegut’s older brother Bernard. And all the while she searches for ways to cope with the grief of her father’s recent passing. “Because I need the water to speak to me too,” she writes. Novelist Jonathan Lethem says, “Nightshining sifts a riveting exposé of the Cold War technocratic fantasy-state through lyrical family memoir.”
Lucy Sante is the author most recently of Nineteen Reservoirs, a history of the New York City watershed, as well as the Pulitzer Prize nominated memoir I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, a New York Times and Washington Post Best Book of the Year. In it she tells two stories, with two timelines, as Sante explores her life as a writer and her story of transitioning. The Boston Globe wrote, “Sante’s bold devotion to complexity and clarity makes this an exemplary memoir. It is a clarion call to live one’s most authentic life.” Lucas Crane lives in Gilboa and has performed internationally at venues ranging from the Brooklyn Museum to the Museum of Art and Design. He’s received a Henry Hewes Award and a Bessie nomination. Co-founder of the renowned Silent Barn, an experimental art and performance space in Bushwick, he just returned from touring in Europe and released the album The Suddering Years on Artsy Records.
Lucas will create a live performance with voices from Nightshining, oral histories told by community elders Betty Baker, Steve Miller, Len Utter, Gary Atkin, and Mabel West, all of whom leant their stories and memories of floods and the reservoir to the book, alongside historic songs and music about flooding. Kabat and Sante will be reading from and discussing their books together.
Kabat says, “While Lucy’s memoir and mine are serious meditations, Nightshining is also about community and how big and broad it might be. I want this to be fun, joyous, and maybe even silly—and open for everyone—kids, parents, friends, dogs. I love what Brooke Alderson and Scott Hill have created in their Putt Putt, this interpretation of Rip Van Winkle’s story and the summer joy that miniature golf evokes. I love too that it is free to play any time for anyone here, with just donations. I’m thrilled getting to read with Lucy who has been a writing hero for years, and Lucas’s way of weaving sound, story, song, creating layers of meaning in his performances is powerful and mirrors what I’ve been trying to create in my two books.”
The reading is in conjunction with the Lost Bookshop in Delhi who will have copies of Kabat and Sante’s books for sale at the event. It begins at 5pm Aug. 9 and is free and open to all. 4700 County Road 6, Bovina NY.
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