Meet Bestselling Author Stephen L. Carter, Author of "Invisible"

Bestselling author Stephen L. Carter will be the featured speaker on Sunday, October 28 at 2:30 p.m. at the Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Building of The Ferguson Library. He’ll be talking about his new book, Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster. Book sale and signing to follow the author presentation. Refreshments will be served. Register online at fergusonlibrary.org.

Stephen L. Carter delved into his past for Invisible, telling the inspiring and extraordinary story of his grandmother, Eunice Hunton Carter, the only member of a group of 20 high-powered lawyers who was not a white male, and devised the strategy that in the 1930s, sent Mafia chieftain Lucky Luciano to prison.

Eunice Hunton Carter was the daughter of a distinguished African American couple and the granddaughter of slaves. A graduate of Smith College and Fordham Law School, she became a key member of the legal team charged with breaking up organized crime in New York City. By the 1940s, she was one of the most famous black women in America. But at every turn, Eunice encountered prejudice, and her triumphs were shadowed by tragedy. Greatly complicating her rise was her difficult relationship with her younger brother, Alphaeus, an avowed Communist who—together with his friend Dashiell Hammett—went to prison during the McCarthy era. Yet she remained unbowed: constantly reinventing herself, she somehow found a way forward.

A woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of the age, Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable book, she is once again visible.

Stephen L. Carter is the bestselling author of seven novels—including The Emperor of Ocean Park and New England White—and eight works of non-fiction. Formerly a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, he is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University, where he has taught for more than 30 years.

For more information, call 203 351-8231. The Ernest A. DiMattia, Jr. Building of The Ferguson Library is located at the corner of Bedford and Broad Streets, Stamford.

(Author photo credit: Elena Siebert)