NEWS RELEASE
CREATIVE AGING BOOKS & IDEAS
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Creative Aging Books & Ideas presents Vancouver emergency room physician and bestselling author of 14 novels Daniel Kalla on Thursday, Oct. 31, at 2 p.m.
Kalla, Canada’s own internationally bestselling author, is the kind of writer who, when avid fans see a book with his name on it, know that they are guaranteed an excellent adventure. Not only are his books entertaining; as an emergency room doctor in a Vancouver hospital the content that Kalla offers up is informative, cutting edge and finger-on-the-pulse topical as to what is going on in today’s society.
The protagonist of High Society, Kalla’s latest book, is Dr. Holly Danvers, who, at 16 years of age, survives a car accident in which her father is killed. It is an event that Holly feels subliminally guilty for having caused. Two decades later, after engaging in ayahuasca treatments in Peru, a psychedelic therapy famously held in the Peruvian jungles, Holly has become a successful psychiatrist who believes in using psychedelics as a core treatment to help patients kick their various addictions, including Xanax, alcohol and sex.
The group that Holly assembles for her experimental trials — a mix of ketamine and MDMA — is a who’s who of accomplishment, weirdness, and fame. It is a gathering of well-heeled people whose “society masks” hide the true essence of who they are behind closed doors. Basically, they are nowhere near who they purport to be. While different in so many ways — several of the characters are real “doozies” — their life struggles and search to be their ‘best selves’ bind them together in a “tribe-like” mentality as they gather together on a weekly basis for experimental rounds of ketamine and MDMA.
One character in particular, Simon, an aging rock star, is so authentically true to rock star perceptions that you will find yourself thinking of him, even shaking your head, relative to his powerlessness over his peccadillos, days and days after you finish Kalla’s book.
Kalla will be in conversation with author and interviewer Cece Scott and will also be reading excerpts from High Society.
Also make sure to also mark your calendar for Creative Aging Books & Ideas’ Nov. 28, 2 p.m. virtual event, with poet, biographer, and essayist Molly Peacock, who will be reading room her new book, The Widow’s Crayon Box, a book of poems — joyful, furious, mournful, sexy and devastated — that Peacock wrote after the death of her beloved husband.
Both events are free with registration for the Zoom link at cecescott.com.
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