Karen Osborn is the author of three previous novels, Patchwork (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Between Earth and Sky , and The River Road . She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband and teaches fiction writing at Mt. Holyoke College and Fairfield University. While growing up in the Midwest, she witnessed a bombing and the resulting conflagration in her small town. Learn more about Karen Osborn at www.karenosborn.net. In August 1967, with the country in controversy over Vietnam and race, George Fowler leaves a bomb in Greeley’s Drugstore on Main Street in Centerville, a small midwestern town. The blast and ensuing fire kill nearly all in the store, including George’s estranged wife, Joyce, who works there. As residents of the small town struggle with the event, Osborn (The River Road, 2002) focuses on a handful who experience guilt. Methodist minister William Edwards had married the Fowlers but forgotten about them until George Fowler comes seeking absolution, and Edwards’ failure in crisis reminds him of counseling a young parishioner, just drafted, to meet his obligation. Police officer and volunteer firefighter Jack Turnbow pulls two people out of the flames, yet he can’t forget not sufficiently helping his new partner, the first black on the force. Then there are the survivors who weren’t in the store solely by chance, including 14-year-old best friends Sandi Edwards and Bertha (“Bert”) Greeley. Osborn’s story, based on her witnessing such an explosion, is a compulsively readable account of the human experience of tragedy and the trauma of its aftermath. --Michele Leber "Osborn's powerful novel, set during the dog days of summer in a small Midwestern town in 1967, begins with a bang when a man bombs the drugstore employing his estranged wife. Osborn (Patchwork), employing a restrained ruthlessness, maintains the tension throughout, and appropriately refuses easy outs for a satisfying conclusion." --Publisher's Weekly "Osborn's story is a compulsively readable account of the human experience of tragedy and the trauma of its aftermath." --Booklist It is 1967 at the end of a long, hot summer. On a Saturday afternoon in Centerville, a sleepy Midwestern town, a disaffected husband enters the busy drugstore where his estranged wife works, and sets a bag with a homemade bomb on the floor. Outside the drugstore, a fourteen-year-old girl places her hand on the door handle, then inexplicably turns away and keeps walking. Moments later standing safely inside a bowling alley with her best friend, she hears a sound like thunder. With one devastating explosion, the town is changed forever. In the next few days, four lives become entwined, as the townspeople face sudden loss and new, unpredictable realities. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the escalating Vietnam War, Centerville forms an engrossing meditation on the complex questions that arise in the wake of senseless violence. Karen Osborn is the author of three previous novels, Patchwork (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Between Earth and Sky , and The River Road . She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband and teaches fiction writing at Mt. Holyoke College and Fairfield University. While growing up in the Midwest, she witnessed a bombing and the resulting conflagration in her small town. Learn more about Karen Osborn at www.karenosborn.net.