Stacey Levine with Anne de Marcken at Powell’s City of Books

Stacey Levine's new novel, Mice 1961 (Verse Chorus), recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will their all-watching companion convey her fierce attachment to them both? When they cross paths with an unsettling stranger at a neighborhood party, the three women are driven toward momentous changes. Set in southern Florida at the peak of Cold War hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging and separateness, conformity and otherness. Levine will be joined in conversation by Anne de Marcken, author of It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over.