Please join us as we welcome Christine Kenneally to Phoenix Books in Burlington for a discussion of her new book, Ghosts of the Orphanage: A Story of Mysterious Deaths, a Conspiracy of Silence, and a Search for Justice.
“Sometimes the world’s secrets have to wait for the right person to turn up to reveal them. Across ten years of hard and painful investigation, Christine Kenneally discovered, explored, and here reports on a great sink of human misery visited upon unprotected children by the very people who were honored for caring for them. It’s a chilling book, but a brave and important one—and a gripping read. It bears comparison to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago.”—Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and A Hole in the World
For much of the twentieth century, a series of terrible events—abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths—took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy, and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For ten years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth.Centering her story on St. Joseph’s, a Catholic orphanage in Vermont, Kenneally has written a stunning account of a series of crimes and abuses. But her work is not confined to one place. Following clues that take her into the darkened corners of several institutions across the globe, she finds a trail of terrifying stories and a courageous group of survivors who are seeking justice. Ghosts of the Orphanage is an incredible true crime story and a reckoning with a past that has stayed buried for too long, with tragic consequences.
Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, Time, and other publications. Her BuzzFeed story about crimes committed at St. Joseph's Orphanage was viewed more than six million times in six months. It won a Deadline Award and was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, a Michael Kelly Award and an Online Journalism Award. It was shortlisted for the Fetisov Prize. Her most recent book, The Invisible History of the Human Race was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014, among other accolades. A native of Australia, Kenneally also has lived in New York, Iowa, and England, where she earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her family.
DATE: Wednesday, March 22nd, 7:00pm
LOCATION: Phoenix Books Burlington, 191 Bank Street, downtown Burlington
ADMISSION: This event is free and open to all, but advance registration is appreciated. Please register below.
BOOKS: Signed copies of Ghosts of the Orphanage will be available at the event. Can't make it to the event but still want to purchase a signed, personalized copy of Ghosts of the Orphanage? Click HERE. Copies will be available after the event on March 22nd. If you ordered a book for store pick up, we will contact you as soon as it's ready. If you ordered a book with shipping, please allow an additional 7-10 days for delivery.