“Universal Harvester” Book Talk & Signing | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Bestselling author of Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle visits the Booksmith to celebrate the publication of his second novel, Universal Harvester.

Jeremy works at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa — a small town in the center of the state, the first “a” in Nevada pronounced “ay.” This is the late 1990s, and while the Hollywood Video in Ames poses an existential threat to Video Hut, there are still regular customers, a rush in the late afternoon. It’s good enough for Jeremy: It’s a job, quiet and predictable, and it gets him out of the house, where he lives with his dad and where they both try to avoid missing Mom, who died six years ago in a car wreck.

But when a couple of customer returns She’s All That, a new release, and complains that there’s something wrong with it: “There’s another movie on this tape.” All of a sudden, what had once been the placid, regular old Iowa fields and farmhouses now feels haunted and threatening, imbued with loss and instability and profound foreboding.

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