Alibi Bookshop December Book Club: Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney Thurs, Dec 11 7pm
Schedule
Thu, 11 Dec, 2025 at 07:00 pm
UTC-08:00Location
624 Marin St, Vallejo, CA, United States, California 94590 | Vallejo, CA
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For the last Book Club gathering of 2025, we will be combining the Memoir and regular book club and meeting once -- Thursday, December 11th at 7pm to discuss "Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk" by Kathleen Rooney. based on the real life poet and ad woman Margaret Fishback, I think it's the perfect choice to end the year!"In my reckless and undiscouraged youth," Lillian Boxfish writes, "I worked in a walnut-paneled office thirteen floors above West Thirty-Fifth Street..."
She took 1930s New York by storm, working her way up writing copy for R.H. Macy's to become the highest paid advertising woman in the country. It was a job that, she says, "in some ways saved my life, and in other ways ruined it."
Now it's the last night of 1984 and Lillian, 85 years old but just as sharp and savvy as ever, is on her way to a party. It's chilly enough out for her mink coat and Manhattan is grittier now--her son keeps warning her about a subway vigilante on the prowl--but the quick-tongued poetess has never been one to scare easily. On a walk that takes her over 10 miles around the city, she meets bartenders, bodega clerks, security guards, criminals, children, parents, and parents-to-be, while reviewing a life of excitement and adversity, passion and heartbreak, illuminating all the ways New York has changed--and has not.
Lillian figures she might as well take her time. For now, after all, the night is still young.
Books are available in the shop, order online at bookshop.org/shop/alibibookshop or audio: libro.fm/alibibookshop
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Where is it happening?
624 Marin St, Vallejo, CA, United States, California 94590Event Location & Nearby Stays:
