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Search Party Book Launch
On Saturday, July 12, please join Inlandia for the launch of Search Party by 2022 Eliud Martínez Prize-winner, René Solivan.
The prize for Search Party was awarded posthumously due to René’s untimely passing in July 2023, but his family, friends, and fans will be there to celebrate the publication of his novel, a “vibrant portrait of a Puerto Rican family that renders the intricate workings of the heart.” (Manuel Muñoz).
All are welcome! Saturday, July 12, 12:00 PM-1:00 PM PDT on Zoom.
To RSVP, please visit https://tinyurl.com/SearchPartyRSVP.
Search Party is available wherever books are sold, including through Inlandia Books https://tinyurl.com/SearchPartyORDER.
About Search Party
Search Party is reminiscent of Ruben Degollado’s The Family Izquierdo and most certainly a nod to Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Told in alternating perspectives, the book is a stellar debut.
This book is so sad and I love it. In Search Party, we meet a family who is holding on to each other by a thread but mostly by blood. A family who continues to get pulled back into a chaotic and painful orbit around their mother, a woman who never wanted a family and is always leaving them. This book asks the question, “What happens when women don’t want a family but are forced to have one?” The answer, if it offers any, is uncomfortable and multilayered.
—Isabel Quintero, Eliud Martínez Prize judge and author of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces
Meet the motley cast of family members: Vinita, the restless mother who has spent her life abandoning her family to pursue her dream of being in the movies; Luis, the son who can’t hold down a job but can talk to dead people; his sister Ivonne who—after five marriages to rich men—has nothing to show for it but money and a son who can’t stand her; their sister Olivia, the writer struggling to piece together the family’s history, never sure if she’s writing a memoir or not; as well as an extended family dealing with their own inadequacies and disappointments. Search Party emerges as a vibrant portrait of a Puerto Rican family that renders the intricate workings of the heart.
Search Party is a novel of departure. It asks us to think about the gauzy, dreamy world we are all tempted to look for and why we might dare go hunting for the place that holds our hopes, our secrets, and our joys.
—Manuel Muñoz, author of The Consequences
About the Author
René Solivan (December 15,1962 – July 13, 2023) was the winner of the Northridge Review Fiction Award, MetLife National Playwriting Award, and a Latino Theatre Initiative Emerging Artist Commission from the Mark Taper Forum (1977 Tony Award, Outstanding Regional Theatre) where Solivan was a playwriting fellow. Solivan’s play Gods & Thieves was presented at Geva Theatre; other plays have been seen on both coasts including his first play, Madre, which had its world premiere at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood where the Los Angeles Times hailed it as, “an absorbing, compelling tour-de-force.”
