A New World in a Book

James A. Levine, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, is a world-renowned scientist, doctor, and researcher. He lives in Oronoco, Minnesota. But his novel The Blue Notebook is the story of Batuk, an Indian girl who is taken to Mumbai from the countryside and sold into prostitution by her father; the blue notebook is her diary, in which she recalls her early childhood, records her life on the Common Street, and makes up beautiful and fantastic tales about a silver-eyed leopard and a poor boy who fells a giant with a single gold coin.

How did he come to write about such a distant subject? Ask him yourself, Wednesday, July 29, 7:30pm, when Levine will be reading at Magers & Quinn Booksellers. Details are here.--David E