Author Alice Mattison will read from her new novel, Conscience, on Wednesday, Oct. 10, at R.J. Julia Booksellers, 768 Boston Post Road, Madison. The event will begin at 7 p.m. and will include a question-and-answer period immediately following the reading.

In Conscience, Mattison tells the story of relationships tested in the crucible of political upheaval. The story is written in chapters narrated by three people. Olive, a white writer and editor in modern day New Haven, is asked to write an essay about a controversial book from the Vietnam War era. Olive knew both the author and the woman at the center of the book, and the assignment forces her to confront tangled histories with these friends and with her husband. Griff, Olive’s husband and the second narrator in Mattison’s book, is an African American man who is haunted by his own actions during the antiwar movement. He borrows Olive’s treasured first edition of the book—and then loses it. Jean, Griff’s colleague and the director of a homeless shelter, is the third narrator. She finds and begins reading the book, setting off a series of events that will introduce new conflicts, tragedies, and friendships into the precarious balance of Olive and Griff’s once stable home.

Conscience is Alice Mattison’s seventh novel. Her earlier novels include The Book Borrower, Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn, and When We Argued All Night. Mattison also is the author of The Kite and the String: How to Write with Spontaneity and Control—and Live to Tell the Tale, as well as four books of stories and a collection of poems. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Ploughshares, and has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and Best American Short Stories. She has held residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and has taught at Brooklyn College, Yale University, and, for more than 20 years, in the Bennington Writing Seminars, the MFA program at Bennington College.

More information is available by calling the bookstore at 203-245-3959. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit alicemattison.com.