Monday, March 16, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 **A stunning literary achievement and portrait of three women connected through one man in the aftermath of his murder—the explosive and highly anticipated debut novel from beloved and award-winning memoirist, T Kira Madden.** Birdie Chang didn’t know anything about Whidbey Island when she chose it, only that it was about as far away as she could get from her own life. She’s a woman on the run, desperate for an escape from the headlines back home and the look of concern in her girlfriend’s eyes—and from Calvin Boyer, the man who abused her as a child and who’s now resurfaced. On her way, she has an unnerving encounter with a stranger on the ferry who offers her a proposition, a sinister solution, a plan for revenge. But Birdie isn’t the only girl Calvin harmed back then. There’s also Linzie King, a former reality TV star who recently wrote all about it in her bestselling memoir_._ Though the two women have never met, their stories intertwine. Once Birdie arrives on Whidbey, she finally cracks the book’s spine, only to find too much she recognizes in its pages. Soon after, on the other side of the country, Calvin’s loving mother, Mary-Beth, receives a shocking phone call from the police: her only son has been murdered. Calvin’s death sets into motion a series of events that sends each woman on a desperate search for answers. A complex whodunnit told from alternating points of view, _Whidbey_ is searingly perceptive and astonishingly original. Exploring the long reach of violence and our flawed systems of incarceration and rehabilitation, this is a tense and provocative debut that’s sure to incite crucial questions about the pursuit of justice and who has real power over a story: the one who lives it, or the one who tells it? **T Kira Māhealani Madden** is a diasporic Kanaka 'Ōiwi (Native Hawaiian) writer and author of the acclaimed memoir _Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls_, which was named a _New York Times_ Editors' Choice, as well as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award. She is the Founding Editor of _No Tokens_, a magazine of literature and art, and has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Tin House, MacDowell, and Yaddo. Winner of the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award, she is an assistant professor at Hamilton College in Creative Writing and Indigenous studies and served as the Distinguished Writer in Residence at University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.