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Meet Author Patricia Averbach

Join us when author Patricia Averbach visits to discuss her new book, Dreams of Drowning.

About the author:

Patricia Averbach began her writing career at sixteen as literary assistant to Anzia Yeszierska, Jewish-American author of the immigrant experience.  A native Clevelander, she’s a former director of The Chautauqua Writers Center in Chautauqua, New York. Her third novel, Dreams of Drowning (Bedazzled Ink, 2024), was a finalist for the Tucson Festival of Books and Chanticleer’s Somerset Award for Literary Fiction. Previous novels include Painting Bridges (Bottom Dog Press, 2013) and Resurrecting Rain (Golden Antelope Press, 2020.) Her poetry chapbook, Missing Persons, (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013) was cited by Times of London Literary Supplement (November 2014) as one of the best small collections of the year. She lives with her husband in a suburb of Cleveland when she’s not visiting her daughters in Toronto, Maui and Peru.

In Dreams of Drowning, it’s 1973 and Amy, an American ex-pat, is living as an illegal immigrant in Toronto where she’s fled to escape the scandal surrounding her twin sister’s death. Joanie’s been gone two years, but Amy still hears her cries for help. Is she hallucinating or is her sister seeking rescue from somewhere beyond time? Romance would jeopardize the secrets Amy has to keep, but when she meets Arcus, a student working to restore democracy in Greece, she falls hard. Arcus doesn’t know about Amy’s past, and she doesn’t know Arcus has secrets of his own.

In 1993 Toronto, Jacob Kanter, a retired archaeologist, is mourning his dear wife and grappling with his son’s plans to move him to a nursing home. Despite multiple infirmities, he remembers sailing as a youth and sets out toward the lake where he boards a mysterious ferry boat embarking on its maiden voyage. He expects a short harbor cruise, but the Aqua Meridian is larger than it looks, and time is slippery on the water. When he hears a drowning woman call for help his story merges with Amy’s, and they discover they have unexpected gifts for one another.

Books will be available for purchase.