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Virtual Author Talk: Kate Beaton, "Hark! A Vagrant!"

Join our online chat with Kate Beaton, bestselling author of "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands". Visit libraryc.org/plainfieldlibrary to watch this Author Talk and more.

This is part of our Author Talk series, bringing nationally celebrated and recognized authors to you. To join the next Author Talk from the comfort of your home, check out https://libraryc.org/plainfieldlibrary.

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant! fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. Her first full-length graphic narrative follows Beaton after university as she heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is more than a memoir, it’s also an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.

Image source: PGTPL