• The book: The Bridge by Doug Marlette (HarperPerennial; $13.95).

• The writer: Mr. Marlette, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who drew on family history for his semi-autobiographical first novel.

• The plot: "In the story-within-a-story, hot-headed political cartoonist Pick Cantrell is fired from his job in New York and returns to Eno, N.C. While renovating a historic house and repairing his life, Pick learns that cantankerous Cantrell matriarch Mama Lucy was a heroine of the General Textile Strike of 1934. A third-person account of Mama Lucy's life, woven into Pick's first-person narrative, portrays an almost-forgotten facet of Southern history," said the Orlando Sentinel.

• The signing: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Edwards and Madison roads, Norwood, 396-8960.