Lunch with Peter Heller

About the Author

PETER HELLER is the best-selling author of The Guide, The River, Celine, The Painter, and The Dog Stars, which has been published in twenty-two languages. Heller is also the author of four nonfiction books, including Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, which was awarded the National Outdoor Book Award. He holds an MFA in poetry and fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and lives in Denver, Colorado.

About Dead Herzls

The bestselling author of The Dog Stars returns with a riveting novel of one man’s resilience against the ocean’s ferocious power as a husband finds himself swept out to sea off the coast of Maine and, while fighting for his very survival, encounters the looters and profiteers who seek to enrich themselves amid the chaos of the storm.

“Get off the island. This is a bad one.” When Jordi Stohlquist’s phone rings in the pre-dawn hours, the ocean looks calm and glassy as a postcard. His cottage, a cabin perched above the sea, is stout as a lighthouse on a promontory, and Jordi finds it hard to believe that some bad weather could destroy what nearly two centuries of Nor’easters could not.

Still, everyone on the island is ordered to evacuate, and so Jordi wakes his wife, Jin, and drives her and their big dog, Mancha, down to the ferry. He kisses her on the pier, surrounded by hundreds of island residents, and Jin begs Jordi to join her on the boat, but he assures her that he’ll be fine and returns to storm proof the cottage they bought a mere four months ago.

As the swells begin to roll in—eight feet, now ten—whitecaps spuming off the tops, waves exploding against the rocks, Jordi boards up the windows and ties down all he can, stopping only when a massive truck skids up to the cottage, disgorging four armed lobstermen in foul weather gear. In a shocking act of self-defense, Jordi is cast into the open ocean, and what follows—at sea, on a strange island, amid the wreckage of a ship, and deep in his own heart—is a thrilling story of survival against all odds.

About the Luncheon

• Doors Open: 11:30 a.m.

• Books: Each ticket includes a catered lunch and a book to be signed and distributed at teh luncheon

• Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend up to two luncheons per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.

• Registration: Pre-registration is required. 

• Payment: Pre-payment is required.

• Cancellation Policy: Please email contact@miamiliterarysociety.org to cancel up to six days before the event. Credit will not be allowed for cancellations received fewer than six days prior to the event.