T.C. Boyle

Main Library Auditorium
Friday, March 16

6:15 - Reception and ticket distribution
7:00 - Author talk with book signing to follow

“Terrifically exciting and unapologetically relevant…Boyle’s white-water prose propels us through sixty years of tumultuous history involving the Northern Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura, California.

—Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“When the Killing’s Done falls in nicely with the mood of Margaret Atwood’s vatic sci-fi tales or Jonathan Franzen’s recent, naturalistic Freedom.”

—Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books

California ’s Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara have been called the Galapagos of North America because their very isolation has helped preserve over 1,000 species of plants and animals, 12 of which are found nowhere else on earth. In visionary novelist T.C. Boyle’s novel, When the Killing's Done, the islands become the setting for a dramatic showdown between two factions of environmentalists, each utterly convinced of their beliefs in preserving the islands and the natural world.

When the Killing's Done poses two sets of characters against each other—neither of whom can simply be dismissed as the “villain.” On the one side is Alma Boyd Takesue, a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading an effort to save the island’s endangered native creatures from invasive species like rats and feral pigs by calling in hunters to eliminate them. On the other side is Dave La Joy, a dreadlocked BMW-driving local businessman, and his lover, the folksinger Anise Reed, who are fiercely opposed to killing any species whatsoever and will go to any lengths to subvert the plans of Alma and her colleagues.

T.C. Boyle is the author of twelve novels including most recently, The Women, a New York Times bestseller, and nine collections of short stories, including Wild Child. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he lives near Santa Barbara, CA and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Upcoming Salon@615 and Night at the Library Events

April 11th – Mountain Film on Tour

April 18th – Adriana Trigiani 

May 3rd – Nashville Opera 

May 16th – Ron Rash

May 17th – Future Break 

May 24th – Andrea Wulf

June 5th – Jeff Shaara

June 14th – Richard Ford