GET LIT: Win a copy of Josh Ritter's Bright's Passage

Josh Ritter has already proven that he can entertain and emote over the course of a five-minute folk song. Now he's gone and done it with a novel.

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GET LIT: Win a copy of Josh Ritter's Bright's Passage

POSTED: Thursday, July 28, 2011, 1:00 PM

When celebrities write novels, we get nervous. (Looking at you, Snook.) But when dreamy singer-songwriters do it, well, we actually expect quite a bit of lyricism, flow and storytelling. Is Josh Ritter up to the task?

Tonight at the Free Library, Ritter will read from his debut work of fiction, Bright's Passage; it's up to you to decide if he's up to literary snuff.

Lee Stabert hashes the whole thing out for us in this week's Agenda:

Idaho-born musician Josh Ritter has already proven that he can entertain and emote over the course of a five-minute folk song. Now he's gone and done it with a novel: His literary debut, Bright's Passage (Dial, June 28), tells the story of Henry Bright, a troubled WWI veteran shouldering the burden of a dead wife, a newborn child and his fraying mind. He sets out from his childhood home in West Virginia under the advice of an ambiguous voice — he calls it an "angel" — he first encountered in France during the war. The prose is taut, the story crisp, and the moral and spiritual implications wonderfully opaque. As in his music, Ritter's quiet intelligence and eye for detail shine, whether he's describing a country breakfast or the midnight dread of a wartime trench.

In anticipation of tonight's talk, we're giving away a copy to one lucky reader who can answer the following trivia question:

What famous writer named Josh Ritter's The Animal Years his favorite album of 2006?

E-mail your answers to carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net.

Josh Ritter reading/signing, Thu., July 28, 7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org.

Posted by Carolyn Huckabay @ 1:00 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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