Monte Schulz Tours in Support of "The Last Rose of Summer"

MONTE SCHULZ TOURS WEST COAST IN MARCH TO PROMOTE THE RELEASE OF THE NEW NOVEL, THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER

Last Rose Of Summer

By: Monty Schultz
Release Date: March 15, 2011
Price: $29.99 • ISBN: 978-1606994016

SEATTLE, WA, FEB. 2, 2011 --- This March, Fantagraphics Books will publish The Last Rose of Summer, a novel by Monte Schulz. To support the release, the author will tour several cities on the West Coast in late-February and March:

Sat., Feb. 26, 4PM • Tecolote Book Shop, Santa Barbara, CA
Tues., March 1, 7:30PM • Warwick’s Books, La Jolla, CA
Thurs., March 3, 6:30PM • Bay Books, Coronado, CA
Fri., March 4, 6PM • Latitude 33 Bookshop, Laguna Beach, CA
Sun., March 6, 5PM • Skylight Books, Los Angeles, CA
Sat., March 19, 4PM • Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, Seattle, WA
Wed., March 23, 7PM • Tsunami Books, Eugene, OR
Sat., March 26, 1PM • The Book Seller, Grass Valley, CA

"Beautifully written and thoroughly researched, a veritable time-machine that whirled me through time to the dirty back roads of the American midwest in the year before the Depression. … Did I mention how good the writing is? The writing is excellent… a masterpiece of setting and storytelling…" – Cory Doctorow, BOINGBOING

With the Great Depression looming and about to define America’s next decade, three strong-minded women related by marriage form an uneasy household in the summer of 1929. Forced by her husband Harry to uproot their two small children from Illinois and take up residence in East Texas, Marie Hennesey struggles to find a place not only within her mother-in-law’s home but in a Southern town whose troubling unfamiliarities compound her marital woes and homesickness.

Maude Hennesey has little patience for Marie and her children, and even less for her own pretty but petulant daughter, Rachel, who fights and flirts with a dashing pilot from New Orleans. Colliding issues of faith and sexual mores, racial proprieties and class distinctions, fuel a constant bickering through the narrow corridors of the house, all three women heedless of the love that has brought them together. Maude seems cold and distant except toward the ladies of her club; Rachel’s affection for her doting aviator rises and falls capriciously; and Marie seeks to understand an absent husband, while deciding how to receive her employer’s slow seduction.

As summer wears on, the conflicts among these women are exacerbated by a child murder that sends shockwaves of fear and mistrust throughout the community, particularly between the town’s white residents and a black shantytown across the river. An ever-increasing sense of dread culminates in the arrival of a terrible storm whose aftermath reveals poignant and unexpected truths about these three women living at a time when America was poised on the brink of economic catastrophe.

In The Last Rose of Summer, Monte Schulz has created a story about three women and their interior and exterior lives, each of whom symbolize quintessential American notions of family, love and community. In so doing, he reminds us all where we come from and how we got here. With an elegiac voice that evokes an era in its final bloom, and a thoughtful rendering of the public and private contentions that ruled the day, The Last Rose of Summer becomes an instant American classic.

Monte Schulz published his first novel, Down By The River, in 1990, and spent the next twelve years writing a tapestry of the Jazz Age, of which The Last Rose of Summer and 2009’s This Side of Jordan are two of three parts. He received his M.A. in American Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he continues to reside. He is the eldest son of Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts).

For more information or to arrange an interview with Monte Schulz, contact Eric Reynolds, Associate Publisher, Fantagraphics Books: 206.524.1967 x218 or reynolds@fantagraphics.com.


SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 4PM
Tecolote Book Shop
1470 E Valley Rd.
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
805.969.4977

TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 7:30PM
Warwick’s
7812 Girard Ave.
La Jolla, CA 92037
858.454.0347
http://www.warwicks.com/

THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 6:30PM
Bay Books
1029 Orange Ave.
Coronado, CA 92118-3405
619.435.0070
http://www.baybookscoronado.com/

FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 6:00PM
Latitude 33 Bookshop
311 Ocean Ave.
Laguna Beach, CA 92651
949.494.5403
http://www.latitude33bookshop.com/

SUNDAY, MARCH 6, 5PM
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
323.660.1175
http://www.skylightbooks.com/

SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 4PM
Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery
1201 S. Vale St. (at Airport Way S.)
Seattle, WA 98108
206.658.0110
http://www.fantagraphics.com/

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 7PM
Tsunami Books
2585 Willamette Street
Eugene, OR 97405
541.345.8986
http://www.myspace.com/tsunamibooks

SATURDAY, MARCH 26, 1PM
The Book Seller
107 Mill St.
Grass Valley, CA 95945
530.272.2131
http://www.grassvalleybooks.com/

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