Author Peg Kingman reads from her new book, Not Yet Drown'd, at Mendocino College on Tuesday, Sept. 18 at 7:30 p.m.

UKIAH – The Friends of the Mendocino College Library are sponsoring a reading by novelist Peg Kingman, whose book, Not Yet Drown'd, is being published by W.W. Norton in early September.

The reading will take place in the Little Theater in the Lowery Library Building at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18. The Ukiah campus is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Rd. in Ukiah. Admission for this event is free and tea will be served following the reading.

The novel follows Catherine MacDonald who is astonished to receive from her twin brother – who had reportedly drowned a year earlier, in the monsoon floods of 1821 – a kashmiri shawl, a caddy of unusual tea and a sheaf of traditional bagpipe music in his handwriting. When had he sent it? And why had he re-titled a certain tune "Not Yet Drown'd"?

Irresistibly, Catherine is drawn to India to search for answers. With her stepdaughter and their two maids – one an enigmatic Hindu, the other a runaway American slave – she follows an obscure trail of tea, opium, and bagpipe music. In the course of their journey they meet botanists, smugglers, engineers, soldiers, and artists – as well as love and betrayal. And as they copy, translate, and finally understand certain Scottish and Indian paintings and music, they discover unsuspected truths about the man they are seeking.

Peg Kingman, formerly a tea merchant, lives on a mountaintop in Redwood Valley where she grows tea and plays the bagpipe.

The Friends of the Mendocino College Library, an affiliate group of the Mendocino College Foundation, sponsor readings throughout the academic year at the college. The next reading will take place in November.

For more information about these events, check www.mendocino.edu or call John Koetzner at the Mendocino College library, 468-3051.

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