Peter Orner at Harvard Book Store presenting The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter in conversation with Tova Mirvis

Harvard Book Store welcomes Peter Orner—author of seven acclaimed books including Maggie Brown & Others, Love and Shame and Love, Esther Stories, and Am I Alone Here?, and chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College—for a discussion of his new novel The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter. He will be joined in conversation by Tova Mirvis—author of the novel We Would Never, as well as three previous novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, a national bestseller.

About The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter

The cold case of a young Hollywood starlet’s death sets a contemporary writer on an epic and comic quest to uncover the truth, and its connection to his own family—a new novel by “a major talent” (New York Times) and “one of the most distinctive voices of his generation” (Granta).

Jed Rosenthal hasn’t published a book in fourteen years, the mother of his child left him in a “trial separation” that has stretched on indefinitely, and he struggles to navigate the daily sorrows of their co-parenting arrangement. But the implosion of Jed’s family is simply a footnote in the larger history of the Rosenthal family’s decline.

Just days after the JFK assassination, Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet was found dead in her Hollywood apartment. The press reported that the 22-year-old was strangled, yet unanswered questions linger to this day. Cookie’s parents—Chicago royalty, Irv and Essee Kupcinet—had been close friends with Jed’s grandparents, but in the aftermath of her death, their friendship abruptly and inexplicably ended. Decades later, Jed pores over family stories, newspaper archives, old photos, and crime scene notes, believing that if he can divine the truth of Cookie’s death—whether it was suicide, murder, or part of a larger conspiracy—it might shed light on a mystery closer to home.

Spanning seventy plus years, and weaving together family drama and a true-life unsolved case, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter is a singular, wryly comic, and deeply human exploration into friendship and the bonds that sustain us.