Jennifer Lunden, author of the 2025 Read ME nonfiction selection, American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life, will speak Thursday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m., at Rockland Public Library.

Lunden will explore the history of medicine and the effects of the industrial revolution and late-stage capitalism through the context of her own chronic illness to examine how we are a nation struggling—and failing—to be healthy.

Lunden is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and former therapist whose work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, Sweet, and Poetry Canada Review. American Breakdown received a starred review from Booklist and was praised by Hippocampus as “a genre-blending masterpiece.” An adapted excerpt, “How Chaos Theory Can Revitalize – and Save – Modern Medicine, was published in LitHub in May 2023.

Read ME is the Maine Humanities Council's statewide summer reading program offered in partnership with Maine State Library and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Every summer, the program gets Mainers all reading books recommended by well-known Maine authors. 

This program will take place in the Community Room. For more information, please email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov. The Rockland Public Library is located at 80 Union Street.