Bookworks to host two author events this week

AT BOOKWORKS

The North Valley bookstore will host two author events this week.

At 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, Caroline Fraser will discuss her new book “Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers.”

Fraser, a Santa Fe resident, grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial killer of women in the annals of American history.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. The book maps the lives of Bundy and others in the West — the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker and the Hillside Strangler.

Fraser learned that Bundy’s hometown of Tacoma, Washington, had one of the most poisonous lead, copper and arsenic smelters in the world. Her investigation also found evidence that plumes of a number of smelters not only sickened people but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.

Fraser will be in conversation with Sally Denton.

Bookworks is also hosting Martha A. Sandweiss, who wrote “The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 26, in conversation with Virginia Scharff.

The photograph of a shawl-wrapped 8-year-old girl standing in between six Anglo men was taken in 1868 at Fort Laramie. The men were there as members of the Indian Peace Commission, which was negotiating a treaty with the Lakota and other Northern Plains tribes. The men were identified, but not the girl, not until Sandweiss began investigating.

She looks into why the girl was in the photo, and learned her name was Sophie Mousseau, whose father was French Canadian and whose mother was Oglala Lakota.

Sandweiss writes that Sophie was “in the middle” of a multi-ethnic family tale as well as part of the story of America’s westward expansion as well as a concurrent story of the diminished Indian dominance of the Northern Plains.

Sandweiss, a Santa Fe resident, is professor emerita in history at Princeton University. She is founding director of the Princeton & Slavery Project.

Bookworks is located at 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW.

AT COLLECTED WORKS

Mariah Blake will discuss her new book “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals” at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 26.

Blake writes about an unassuming insurance underwriter in Hoosick Falls, New York, who in 2014, after losing several relatives and friends to cancer, began to suspect that the local water supply was polluted. When he tested the tap water, he discovered dangerous levels of forever chemicals.

This chain of events led to 100 million Americans learning their drinking water was tainted. The book also tells of an apparent cover-up by the American government and manufacturers of toxic chemicals about water hazards dating back to the Manhattan Project.

Blake will be in conversation with Jim Falk, program chair of Global Santa Fe.

Collected Works is located at 202 Galisteo St., Santa Fe.

BOOKS ON THE BOSQUE

Fiction writer P.M. Vance will chat about her new book “Game” at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 28.

“Game” is the first installment of a planned coming-of-age trilogy.

Vance, a New Mexico resident, is also an attorney and an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.

Books on the Bosque is located a 6261 Riverside Plaza Lane NW.

Bookworks to host two author events this week