Book Launch Party for Mary Heglar and "Troubled Waters"

May 8 2024 | 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

301 E Scenic Dr, Pass Christian, MS 39571

Please join us for the launch of Mary Annaïse Heglar’s debut novel, Troubled Waters, which draws on the author’s family history to tell a story of the climate change generation, the civil rights generation, and the things that go unsaid between the two. Mary is known for her essays that dissect and interrogate the climate crisis, with a focus on climate grief and climate justice. Her work has been published in outlets including The Nation, New York Magazine, Vox, and Rolling Stone, as well as in collections like All We Can Save, Not Too Late, and the Black Agenda. Mary is based in New Orleans, but her heart is in Mississippi and her soul is in Birmingham. 

Mary will be joined in conversation by Ko Bragg, a writer and editor based in New Orleans. Ko’s work focuses heavily on the Black experience and spans from police abolition to climate change to family history. Her work has been published in outlets like The Atlantic, Scalawag, and Harper’s Bazaar. Ko is a proud Mississippian. 

In Troubled Waters, Mary Annaïse Heglar uses heartfelt, lyrical prose to weave an unforgettable story of the climate crisis, Black resistance, and the enduring power of family. After Corinne's brother dies aboard an oil boat on the Mississippi River in 2013, Corrine finds herself trapped in a lonely cycle of mourning both her brother and the very planet she stands on. A year later, she’s convinced that she has to make sure that her brother’s life meant something, but in so doing, she awakens family ghosts she knows little about. These are the ghosts that have followed Grandmother Cora from her days as a child integrating schools in 1950s Nashville to her new life as a mother, grandmother, and teacher in Mississippi. As a child of the Civil Rights movement, Cora has done her best to keep those specters away from her granddaughter. She faced those demons, she reasons to herself, so that Corinne would never know they existed. When Corrine’s plan to stage a dramatic act of resistance peels back the scabs of her family wounds and puts her safety in jeopardy, both grandmother and granddaughter must bring their unspoken secrets into the light to find a path to healing. Their world hangs in the balance as past and future meet in the present moment.