Whale Tale: Author To Speak About Tragedy at Sea Saturday

Framingham Public Library invited the community to participate in the 3rd Annual Framingham Reads Together event this month.

The town-wide “one book, one community” program, this time around is
Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

The featured book is one of the greatest sea stories ever, a fascinating narrative of the extraordinary-but-true events on which Melville’s Moby Dick was based.

And on Saturday, the acclaimed Nantucket author will speak about his book and
the research/writing process in the Fuller Middle School auditorium at 10 a.m.

In 1819, the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, disease, and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.

There are book discussion scheduled on the book:

• Tomorrow, March 20,  7 p.m. at the McAuliffe Branch
• Thursday, March 21, 10 a.m. at the McAuliffe Branch
• Tuesday, April 2, 7 p.m. at the main Framingham Library
• Wednesday, April 17, 10 a.m. at the Callahan Senior Center

For more information on Framingham Reads Together events, please visit Framingham Public Library’s website at: www.framinghamlibrary.org.