Mary Beth Keane's tour for her new novel runs through Barnes and Noble flagships from North Carolina to Montana, McNally Jackson in Manhattan and Parnassus Books in Nashville. It touches Long Island exactly once: at Northport Books, the independent bookstore on Main Street in Northport, on Friday, November 6 at 7 p.m.

The author of Ask Again, Yes

Keane is best known for Ask Again, Yes, her 2019 novel about two police families in a New York suburb. Her other novels are The Walking People, Fever and The Half Moon. Whale Harbor, which went on sale October 20, is her fifth. The publisher's description places the new book in 1960s Ireland, following eleven brothers whose lives split across Ireland, England, Montana and New York, in a story Keane has said draws on her own family history.

A night in conversation

At Northport Books, Keane will appear in conversation with writer Heather Aimee O'Neill. The event is listed on the Village of Northport's community calendar, which carries an RSVP link, and on the author's own tour schedule.

The Northport stop lands in the thick of the tour's New York swing: Keane appears at the Nyack Library on November 4 and at McNally Jackson Seaport in Manhattan on November 5 before coming out to Northport on November 6. The full schedule runs roughly twenty dates between late October and mid December, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Bozeman, Montana to Portland, Maine and Edgartown, Massachusetts. Later dates take her to Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Tennessee, where novelist Kevin Wilson moderates at Parnassus Books in Nashville, and an Eastchester stop is moderated by Anna Quindlen.

Why Northport

Northport Books is a storefront shop on Main Street in Northport village that hosts author readings and conversations through the year. For Long Island readers, November 6 is the one date on this tour where hearing Keane talk about the new book does not require a train, a bridge or a ferry.

Going

The conversation is Friday, November 6 at 7 p.m. at Northport Books on Main Street in Northport. The RSVP link is posted with the event on the Village of Northport's calendar at northportny.com, and the store can answer questions about copies of Whale Harbor and signing logistics.

Sources