Model Home by Rivers Solomon

SATURDAY, JUNE 6

FLAVA CAFE (ST. PAUL)

1:30-3pm

What does my ticket cost go to?

The cost of your ticket goes to our programming, event facilitation, and every ticketed event will include a donation to charity. About 35% of your ticket cost for Model Home will be donated to Queermunityfor this event (Happy Pride Month!). Please be sure that you can make the event when you register as registration is non-refundable. If you’d like to transfer your ticket to someone else, please email Softcoverbookclubmn@gmail.com with the information of who you are transferring your ticket to. Thank you!

Flava Cafe

Flava Cafe is a community oriented coffee shop with an incredible mission. In 2024 they were awarded by the City of St. Paul honoring a women-owned business that are committed to equity and empowerment. We encourage members to grab a coffee or bev from Flava at the event!

Want your book delivered while still supporting indie bookstores? You can order Model Home here - https://bookshop.org/shop/softcoverbookclub.*

About the author

Rivers Solomon is an American author of speculative and literary fiction. In 2018, they received the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses' Firecracker Award in Fiction for their debut novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts, and in 2020 their second novel, The Deep, won the Lambda Literary Award. We are a fan of getting to know authors through interview and their own words, we saw there was an episode where Rivers Solomon talks about Model Home on the podcast “Gays Reading” for anyone interested. There may be spoilers so maybe something to listen to after reading the novel.

Synopsis

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things―the strange and the unexplainable―began to happen in their house.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.

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Note, there may be some trigger warnings for novels we read at Soft Cover and we encourage readers to only join events on books with themes they are comfortable discussing.