The White Hart Speaker Series is presented in collaboration with The White Hart Inn, Scoville Memorial Library and Oblong Books & Music
It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. In the haute-bohemian circles of Austria, Germany, and Paris, Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of “cultural degenerates”―artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed antithetical to the new regime. To prevent the destruction of her favorite art (and artists), the impetuous American heiress and modern art collector, Leonora Calaway, begins chartering boats and planes for an elite group of surrealists to Costalegre, a mysterious resort in the Mexican jungle, where she has a home.
Sinuous and striking, heartbreaking and strange, Costalegre is heavily inspired by the real-life relationship between the heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter, Pegeen. Acclaimed author Courtney Maum triumphs with this wildly imaginative and curiously touching story of a privileged teenager who has everything a girl could wish for except for a mother who loves her back.
Courtney Maum is the author of Touch (a New York Times Editor’s Choice and NPR’s Best of 2017), as well as the acclaimed I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You. Her book reviews, essays and articles about the writing life have been widely published in The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, BuzzFeed, Interview Magazine and Electric Literature.