News Release
October 2001
(Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania)--Moravian College's Arts and Lectures Committee will hold
a Readings from The Fall of a Sparrow, by author Robert Hellenga. The
readings will take place on Wednesday October 24, 2001, at 8 p.m. in
Prosser Auditorium, Haupert Union Building, at W. Locust and Monocacy
streets. The reading is free and open to the public. Hellenga's book,
The Fall of a Sparrow, is available in Moravian College bookstore.
Hellenga grew up in Three Oaks, Michigan. He graduated
from the University of Michigan and later received his Ph.D. in English
from Princeton. He also was the director of the Associated Colleges
of the Midwest Florence Programs in Florence, Italy. He now resides
with his wife in Galesburg, Illinois where he teaches English at Knox
College.
The Fall of a Sparrow is about Woody Woodhull, whose daughter
was killed in the terrorist bombing of the train station in Bologna
in 1980. The story triangulates the explosion, Woodhull's earlier life
and the period, and seven years after the tragedy. Woody is a teacher
who has a hard time dealing with this death and immerses himself in
blues music in the healing process. He has an affair with a student
and feels he has done nothing wrong when he reads the new sexual harassment
policy. Woody deals with the grief but has a problem with the terrorist
still being alive and unrepentant. The book is full of absurdly hilarious
parts and painfully moving parts.
For more information, call (610) 861-1491, or visit www.moravian.edu
