VIRTUAL - Idra Novey - TAKE WHAT YOU NEED

Brazos Bookstore will host Idra Novey virtually on Wednesday, March 22 at 6:30pm CT.

Idra Novey will be in conversation with Mark Haber.

This event will be hosted on Zoom Webinar. Click here to register.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Oprah Daily, Vulture, Today.com, Elle, and Lit Hub.

In her most powerful book yet, award-winning writer Idra Novey has conjured a novel of "astonishing and singular" honesty (Rumaan Alam) with two determined, unforgettable female voices.

Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean, and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who's sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah's urban life with her young family, she's revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother’s hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left behind. 

What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled the house with giant sculptures she’s welded from scraps of the area’s industrial history. There’s also a young man now living in the house who's played an unknown role in Jean's last years and in her art. 

With great verve and humor, Idra Novey zeroes in on the joys and difficulty of family, the ease with which we let distance mute conflict, and the power we can draw from creative pursuits.

Passionate and resonant, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, and what can be built from what others have discarded—art, unexpected friendship, a new contentment of self. This is Idra Novey at her very best.

Idra Novey is the award-winning author of the novels Ways to Disappear and Those Who Knew. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. She teaches fiction at Princeton University and in the MFA Program at New York University.

Mark Haber is the author of the 2008 story collection Deathbed Conversions and the novel Reinhardt's Garden, longlisted for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award. He is the operations manager at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. His nonfiction has appeared in the Rumpus, Music & Literature, and LitHub. His fiction has appeared in Southwest Review and Air/Light.