Anyone who has visited Mainstreet since early May is likely to have had their ear bent about one book in particular – Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott. It is one of those eye-opening, life-changing books that is a bookseller’s dream. So it is with great excitement that we announced Pulitzer prize-winning author, Andrea Elliott would be with us on Thursday 13th October to talk about her remarkable book.

Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter.

Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As she moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. She comes of age as New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding.

When, at age thirteen, Dasani wins a place at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if taking this opportunity means abandoning the family you love? By turns heart-breaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.

“Indelible, virtuosic… A remarkable feat of extended reportage.”
– Financial Times

“A classic to rank with Orwell.”
– Sunday Times

Buy Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott HERE