Join us at First Light to toast a brilliant new book from one of our own.

A reception with the author will take place from 6:00 to 6:30 PM, followed by the conversation at 6:30 PM and a signing to close the evening. Tickets include a copy of the book and a reserved seat. Unreserved seats are available on a first come, first served basis. Free RSVPs are also encouraged.​​

A rockstar's marriage is ending, her band is breaking up, and her thirteen-year-old daughter has just vanished into the chaos of Burning Man. That's where Mudlark opens, and it only gets more electric from there. Mary Helen Specht's new novel moves between two women across a fractured timeline: Jenny Sweet, a reluctant wife and mother chasing one last shot at reinvention, and her daughter Neko, who twenty-five years later scavenges the flooded ruins of Manhattan.

Perfect for fans of Station Eleven and Daisy Jones & The Six.​

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about Mudlark

Mudlark is a feminist odyssey about who leaves, what gets left behind, and what can still be saved from a damaged world. Set in a future wracked by calamity and buoyed by hope, it braves rival factions and feral survivalists alongside Neko as she races to learn the truth about an album and the mother who disappeared more than a decade ago.

"A luscious, awe-inspiring, and gorgeously written novel about love." —Amanda Eyre Ward

"Absolutely hypnotic... told with all the lyrical grace of the best literary fiction." —Justin Cronin, author of The Ferryman

"Intricate, propulsive, thoughtful, beautiful... Mudlark does it all." —Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book

"A tour de force... a feminist Odyssey." —Louisa Hall, author of Reproduction

"A stunner... audaciously imaginative, brutally tender, a love letter and a cautionary tale." —Jennifer duBois, author of The Last Language

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about Mary Helen Specht

Mary Helen Specht is the author of Mudlark and the novel Migratory Animals, a New York Times Editors' Choice and winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Best First Fiction Award and the Writers' League of Texas Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, and many other publications. A Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria and a Dobie-Paisano Writing Fellow, she teaches creative writing at St. Edward's University in Austin, where she lives with her family.

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