Faculty Heidi Julavits publishes her new novel The Vanishers from Doubleday Books, due out on March 13, 2012. The Vanishers is a wildly imaginative and emotionally intense novel about mothers, daughters and the psychic damage women can inflict on one another, chronicling the paranormal warfare between a young psychic and her mentor. This is Julavits' fourth novel. She is also the co-founder and co-editor of The Believer.
Julavits will be at the powerHouse Arena on the day of the the novel's release and will interview Betsy Cohen, a real life psychic, about the quirks and dramas of the soothsaying industry.
Tuesday March 13, 7 PM
37 Main Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Brooklyn, NY 11201
About The Vanishers:
Is the bond between mother and daughter unbreakable, even by death? Julia Severn is a student at an elite institute for psychics. Her mentor, the legendary Madame Ackermann, afflicted by jealousy, refuses to pass the torch to her young disciple. Instead, she subjects Julia to the humiliation of reliving her mother's suicide when Julia was an infant. As the two lock horns, and Julia gains power, Madame Ackermann launches a desperate psychic attack that leaves Julia the victim of a crippling ailment.
Julia retreats to a faceless job in Manhattan. But others have noted Julia's emerging gifts, and soon she's recruited to track down an elusive missing person—a controversial artist who might have a connection to her mother. As Julia sifts through ghosts and astral clues, everything she thought she knew of her mother is called into question, and she discovers that her ability to know the minds of others—including her own—goes far deeper than she ever imagined. As powerful and gripping as all of Julavits's acclaimed novels, The Vanishers is a stunning meditation on grief, female rivalry, and the furious power of a daughter's love.
