An Evening with David Guterson & Cristina Nosti

Join acclaimed author David Guterson at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a conversation with our very own, Cristina Nosti about , a luminous novel about defying expectations, spiritual searching, and what it means to live the right way. Written with clarity, humor, and compassion, the book follows intertwined lives across the American West and Tibet, exploring faith, identity, and reinvention.

🎟 This event is free with RSVP.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

For much of her young life in Evansville, Indiana, Evelyn Bednarz has been at odds with nearly everything. Physically strong, eccentric and rebellious, she yearns relentlessly for something she can't name. Determined to find "the right way to live," she hits the road at the age of 18 with a map of the United States, a loaf of bread, and a jar of peanut butter.
Ten thousand miles away, Tsering Lepka, a Tibetan boy, dreams of escape. As the sixth reincarnation of Norbu Rinpoche, and the future abbot of Thaklung Monastery, he comes of age in an insular world of prayer, mantras and prostrations--one he isn't certain is right for him.
In David Guterson’s novel EVELYN IN TRANSIT (W.W. Norton; January 20, 2026; hardcover, $29.99), these two disparate characters enact similar journeys, ones that collide when Evelyn--a single mother--is told that her son Cliff is the seventh Norbu Rinpoche. With that she must make a momentous decision: keep Cliff close to her, or send him, at five years of age, to a Buddhist monastery on the far side of the world.
As with his previous novels--including the PEN/Faulkner-winning Snow Falling on Cedars and The Other (which the Washington Post Book World called “gorgeous” and “haunting,”)--David Guterson trains his tender and compassionate eye on the struggle to live one’s life with existential clarity. A writer of limpid grace, of vivid, economical description and unsentimental characterization, Guterson creates a world—two worlds, in fact—in which Evelyn and Tsering, both restless searchers, travel vast distances, both internal and external, to arrive at their destinations. With EVELYN IN TRANSIT, he bridges the mundane and the cosmic to tell a humorous and humane story about our eternal aspiration toward meaning and purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

David Guterson is the author of 12 books, including the novel Snow Falling on Cedars, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and of the American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award. His writing has been celebrated for its atmospheric intensity, narrative drive, and probing exploration of fundamental human themes--love, death, meaning, and morality among them. Guterson's body of work includes 6 novels, 2 story collections, 2 works of non-fiction, and 2 books of poetry. He was born in Washington State and still lives there.

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