An Evening with Joseph Earl Thomas: God Bless You, Otis Spunkemeyer

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is thrilled to host award-winning author Joseph Earl Thomas in Harrisburg for a conversation and signing on his new novel, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer. God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is a powerful examination of everyday black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics. It follows Joseph Thomas, who is fighting to find his footing after a deployment in the Iraq War dually defined by threat and interminable mundanity. Now a doctoral student at The University, and an EMS worker at the hospital in North Philly, he encounters round the clock friends and family from his past life and would-be future at his job, including contemporaries of his estranged father, a man he knows little about. Balancing the joys and frustrations of single fatherhood, his studies, and ceaseless shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his friends and colleagues. This event is free and open to the public. To enter the signing line, books must be purchased from the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event, or you may pre-order a copy of the book for pickup/shipment. Pre-ordered books may not be signed until after the event.