Author Event With Jennifer Berry Hawes

After a 2015 mass shooting at the predominantly black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., claimed the lives of nine people, a narrative about the victims’ families forgiving the shooter at a press conference spread like wildfire. Jennifer Berry Hawes, a reporter at Charleston’s The Post and Courier, digs into that story in Grace Will Lead Us Home. In a recent NPR interview, Hawes said her reporting found: “Many people really, really struggled with the idea of forgiving someone who’d done something so terrible. And others felt it whitewashed what had happened, and it gave cover to people who preferred not to address the dramatic racial disparities that still exist in South Carolina and racism in the city’s history and all sorts of other things that needed to be confronted.” Hawes interviewed family members of those who died at Emanuel AME and determined that the forgiveness narrative was a lot more complex than originally reported — some deep divisions in families developed in the wake of the tragedy. Hawes will chat at Parnassus about what the shooting exposed in the Charleston community and in the nation. 6:30 p.m. at Parnassus, 3900 Hillsboro Pike, Suite 14 AMANDA HAGGARD