Linda Grace will read from and discuss her novel, Niagara, at Buffalo Street Books in the Dewitt Mall in Ithaca, NY on Sunday, June 4, from 1 to 2 p.m.

            A native of Niagara Falls, Grace's novel focuses on the city's historic past and current issues of development and preservation, including the lasting consequences of New York state's hostile takeover of land on the Tuscarora Indian reservation in the 1950s to build a reservoir for the Niagara hydroelectric power project, a legal battle that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

            "The future always seems to bump against the past in Niagara Falls," Grace says. While some characters in Niagara embrace change in the city, others try to preserve what remains of the city's historic legacy. A dark sequence of events leads to a deadly showdown at the brink of the Horseshoe Falls.

            "The book entertains and engages the reader with complexities of life," writes Ithaca historian Carol Kammen in The Ithaca Journal. "... there are characters in the book engaged with the difficulty of growing up at a difficult time, and there are people to cherish who love and are loved."

            Grace previously headed news and communications at Cornell University and the University at Buffalo.