Michael Downs in Baltimore Mar 29, 2012 7:00 PM

Towson University Professor, Michael Downs, will be reading from and signing copies of his latest book, The Greatest Show.About the Book:Baton Rouge, LAInspired by the 1944 Hartford Circus Fire, the interconnected stories in Michael Downss The Greatest Show explore the aftermath of a disaster in a world of clowns, elephants, and childhood fantasies. In the opening story, Ania Liszak, a young Polish housemaid, steals circus tickets from her employer to take her three-year-old son, Teddy, to the matinee. The fire nearly kills both and leaves them scarred in different ways: Teddys mother enjoys the beautiful strangeness of the scar on her face, but the patches across Teddys body inspire cruel schoolmates to callhim Lizard Liszak. Over time, his mother transforms her pain into drama, while Teddy, having no memory of that day, seeks ways to return to it.These and other captivating characters appear throughout the book, creating a portrait of an American city and its people over five decades, raising questions about wounds and healing, memory and forgetting, and about the human capacity for kindnesswith all its futility and powerin the midst of great loss.About the Author:Michael Downs, a Hartford native, is the author of House of Good Hope: A Promise for a Broken City, which won the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize. A recipient of a literary fiction fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he lives in Baltimore,Maryland, and is an assistant professor of English at Towson University. Location Information: Homewood - Barnes & Noble JHU Book Store 3330 St. Paul Street Baltimore, MD 21218 Phone: 410-662-5850