For Adults
Author Kath Jonathan will discuss her latest book, The Resistance Painter, an evocative work of historical fiction, examining the little known story of Poland's extraordinary WWII resistance army and the contemporary lives of two artists, grandmother and granddaughter, inextricably linked by a wartime betrayal.
Presented in partnership with Words Worth Books.
The Resistance Painter is a gripping novel of wartime betrayal and survival. A Globe and Mail and Toronto Star instant best seller, it has been called "timely and timeless" by Janet Sommerville in the Toronto Star and recommended on CBC radio and on CBC books. At the heart of this novel beats a question as urgently relevant today as it was eighty-five years ago: How do we live with integrity and compassion in the middle of a war?
In The Resistance Painter, we meet Jo, a young sculptor who specializes in interviewing dying people before she makes a highly stylized sculpture for their graves site. When her new client, Stefan, tells a life story eerily similar to her grandmother's wartime history, Jo begins to dig for answers, catapulting the novel back into Warsaw 1939 when her grandmother was a young woman faced with a brutal Nazi occupation.
Irena and her dedicated nurse sister, Lotka, must decide how to survive while helping their family, friends and country. Irena joins the Polish resistance and becomes expert at conducting people through the dangerous sewers of Warsaw. Her sister Lotka follows a different path. She becomes a respected nurse whose skill is much admired by the occupiers as well as the resistors.
Later, Irena goes on to become a lauded painter whose stark, tender artwork holds terrifying secrets, while Jo discovers a voice and a family she never knew she had. Focused on finding the humanity in all its richly complex characters, this is a layered story which uniquely manages to hold all sides in suspension. In the space between All the Light We Cannot See and Warlight on one side, and The Secret Keeper and The Secret History of Audrey James on the other, The Resistance Painter offers a story of lesser known events in wartime Poland and a picture of life in multicultural Toronto where generations of survivors continue to live out the effects of their wartime lives.
Kath Jonathan’s first novel, The Resistance Painter is an instant Toronto Star and Globe and Mail bestseller. Published by Simon and Schuster Canada, the dual timeline historical novel is set in Toronto 2010 and Warsaw, Poland 1939 to 1944. A poet, short story, and novel writer, her work has been short listed for the Marina Nemat Award for outstanding manuscript, has been a finalist for The Janice Colbert Poetry Award, long listed for The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for short story, and published in online literary magazines. A former teacher, Kath has taught English in a literacy program, at a prison, a high school and at colleges. She holds a Certificate in Creative Writing as well as a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Toronto. Happy to call Toronto home, Kath is also a twenty-year beginner level student of flamenco and tap dance.
Moderating will be Rachel McMillan. Rachel McMillan is the author of The Herringford and Watts mysteries, The Van Buren and DeLuca mysteries, The Three Quarter Time series, The London Restoration and The Mozart Code. Her non-fiction works including Dream Plan Go: A Travel Guide for Independent Adventure and A Very Merry Holiday Movie Guide. Rachel lives in Toronto, Canada and is always reading.
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Programmer: Nancy
Located at the RIM Park Manulife Sportsplex, the Eastside Branch boasts specialized creative spaces, quiet study areas, a nature education space and lots of natural light.
