Author Jen Watkins with her chicken at home in El Rancho. Courtesy photo

COUNTY News:

The staff at Mesa Public Library presents ‘So Pipe the Young: A Southwestern Gothic Set in Rural New Mexico’ , 7-8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, live on Zoom.

This psychological thriller, written by emerging author Jen Watkins, explores the dark side of rural life and isolation and is poised to leave us feeling unsettled in all of the right ways.

The program includes book excerpts followed by an author discussion and Q&A session. 

After a murder on her kindergartner’s playground, a robotics engineer abandons her career and uproots her family for the safety of country life, but something sinister follows.

So Pipe the Young is prescient literary fiction that examines our fear of insignificance, online fame, conscientious living, loneliness, the opioid epidemic, urban and rural divides, and the perverse aspirations of today’s elites. The novel is the first in a four-part series entitled Dark Season. 

Watkins resides on a gentleman’s farm in Santa Fe, among a plethora of backyard fowl and other beasts. After retiring from LANL, where she spent 12 years as a computational social scientist, she set her sights to sailing and spent 18 months aboard the S/V Red Herring, traveling from British Columbia down through the Pacific Coast of Mexico. It was during this chapter of her life that her writing career was born, and she now spends her days writing dark stories about people who incautiously choose the rural life and suffer tragically as a result.

This event is offered at no cost to the public and will be conducted online via Zoom. To obtain a meeting link and access the program, register through the Event Calendar or call 505.662.8257.