Authors@Google: Charles Bock March 2, 2009

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Charles Bock visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Beautiful Children: A Novel." This event took place on February 23, 2009, as part of the Authors@Google series.

In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption-heralding the arrival of a major new writer.

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesnt come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her sons room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boys father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.

Charles Bock was born in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has an MFA from Bennington College and has received fellowships from Yaddo, UCross, and the Vermont Studio Center. He lives in New York City. Visit the authors website at www.beautifulchildren.net.