“And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.”

You might think you know what happens to the rebellious handmaid Offred after that fearful step up into a black van. But at best you know what happens to TV’s version of the iconic character. Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian classic “The Handmaid’s Tale” left the original novel behind after the first season. The episodes that followed were, by necessity, series creator Bruce Miller’s vision, not the acclaimed Canadian author’s.

Now Atwood gets her turn. She returns to Gilead in “The Testaments,” which will hit bookstore shelves in early September. The 79-year-old Booker Prize winner will take to the road to talk about the new novel and answer fans’ questions. She’ll be at the Keller Auditorium in Portland on Sept. 25. Tickets to the event range from $15 to $85. (Buy tickets.)

📆 MARK YOUR CALENDARS—Margaret Atwood is going on tour this fall for her new book THE TESTAMENTS (the sequel to THE HANDMAID’S TALE)! Get your tickets now through the venues’ websites! pic.twitter.com/wkQrH6pEDh — Doubleday (@doubledaybooks) May 9, 2019

What do we know about the new novel?

The publisher has offered only this: “When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ readers had no way of telling what lay ahead. With ‘The Testaments,’ the wait is over. Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.”

Atwood herself teased a tiny bit more:

“Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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