Last Night: Kyle Beachy's Homecoming Slide

Feb 6, 2009 at 5:10 pm
St. Louis native Kyle Beachy was warmly welcomed home last night at Left Bank Books in the Central West End, his presence due to the release of his debut novel, The Slide.

Beachy is profiled in this week's issue of the RFT by writer Ben Westhoff. Read "St. Louis Serenade: Seven Years in the Making, Kyle Beachy's Debut Novel is a Love Letter to the Gateway City."

As Westhoff writes in this week's feature, Beachy's novel is set in St. Louis and very loosely based off the author's own experiences during the summer he spent living at home after graduating college:

The burden of wealth is a central theme in Beachy's debut novel, The Slide, published last month as a paperback original by Random House -- and to critical acclaim. From Entertainment Weekly to Publishers Weekly, the book has drawn raves, with Booklist asserting that Beachy "perfectly captures the brain-fogging mugginess of summer in the Midwest and the quarry-deep reticence of midwesterners in a funny and endearing novel...."

After the jump are photos from a packed Left Bank Books (the Central West End location) last night.