Local Author Eliza Gouverneur: The Palm of Tyrants

GPL is pleased to welcome local author Eliza Gouverneur on Thursday, June 25 at 2:00 pm in the library’s Conference Room, for an author talk about her new book The Palm of Tyrants: a Mystery of Roman Palestine.

Yona has no child. After ten years of a good marriage, the law requires her husband to divorce her and try again. She is a rarity, an educated woman, but that does not make it any easier to accept her heartbreaking and perilous position. Having fled Jerusalem, she has no dowry and precious few domestic skills. Neither her scholarship nor her cleverness is considered a desirable marriage trait.

Then Joseph is found at the foot of his cart, his head bashed in. Neighbors remember their arguments. Rumors fly, then accusations.

Yonah must rise from the shock of Joseph’s murder to pursue the mystery or she will lose everything. Can she reason her way through the dangerous tangle of zealots and scholars, corrupt officials and the priests of the emperor’s cult? And if she does discover Joseph’s killer, will anyone listen?

A retired librarian, Eliza has been writing since 1994. She is a graduate of the University of Rochester, where she saturated herself with photography and Plato’s dialogues on the way to a major in Anthropology. She has studied at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Gratz College, and with Marge Piercy at Elat Chayyim. The Palm of Tyrants is her first mystery. She has also published Kiddushin, or Toaster Oven Fire, a book of poems. She lives in Western Mass.

For more information, contact Lisa Prolman at 413-772-1544 or email at [email protected].

This program, generously sponsored by the Friends of the Greenfield Public Library, is free and intended for ages 12 and up. Books will be available for purchase at the event.