Thursday, September 18
11:00 am – 11:45 am
Ashe County Public Library
This event is free and open to the public, no registration required.
Join us for a reading with Sara Johnson Allen with time for audience Q&A.
Sara Johnson Allen was raised (mostly) in North Carolina. Her debut novel, Down Here We Come Up, winner of the Big Moose Prize from Black Lawrence Press, was released in August 2023. A recipient of the Marianne Russo Award for Emerging Writers by the Key West Literary Seminar, the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize, an artistic grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and MacDowell fellowships, her work has appeared in PANK Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Reckon Review among others. When she is not teaching or shuttling her three kids around, she writes about place and how it shapes us. sarajallen.com
Down Here We Come Up is about three women who have lost connection with their children, through alienation, adoption, and across a militarized border. Their lives intersect in a “safe house” for migrant workers outside of Wilmington, North Carolina in 2006.
From her deathbed, con-artist Jackie Jessup lures home her estranged 26-year-old daughter Kate Jessup. There, Kate meets former teacher Maribel Reyes, who is separated from her family in Ciudad Juárez. While none of these women trust each other, they do have a chance to get back what they have each lost. But they must rely on each other to hatch a perilous plan Kate doubts could ever work. She knows to distrust the motives behind any of her mother’s plans. Something unseen is smoldering underneath the surface. Kate just needs to figure it out.
As the three women work alongside each other, the evils of human trafficking, the lucrative lure of the drug and weapons trade, and the heartbreak of people fleeing their homelands flow through Jackie’s bungalow day and night.
A story of mothers and daughters, lost children, and broken love, Down Here We Come Up, takes a raw and intimate look at flawed people who are trying to make up for lost time and past miscalculations.
