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Philadelphia. I love her. I write about her. I celebrate her. But don't think that I can't see. This can be a hard-knock city. It doesn't always love you back.
Today I'm remembering a moment I will forever cherish.
Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial novel, being featured as part of a First Book celebration. Mayor Nutter, standing beside me, signed my books for 120-plus young people who had never owned a book before.
I was honored.
I always am.
I got behind on this day—a book to read and review, some client care, a trip to the dentist, some forever inadequate taming of the jungle of my garden (oh my), and lunch with a friend whose capacious mind is thrilling, frankly, to be near. What he knows. What he thinks. I sit back and listen.
It is not until just now, then, that I have a moment to thank Sarah Lamport Laurence for a list of tween books that has a lot of people talking. People are looking for Sarah's kind of thinking about books all the time, and today she put together a most valued collection of recommended reads for tween readers. I am honored to find both Dangerous Neighbors and Undercover included.
Additionally I am grateful to Junior Library Guild for making today its Going Over day. And I am thankful to Indigo for placing my Berlin novel on its Best Teen Books of 2014 So Far list.
This weekend, St. David's Episcopal Church in Radnor, PA, is celebrating the life of St. David, Patron Saint of Wales, who established the church (a glorious stone building about a mile from my home) three hundreds years ago. Photography, singing vicars, and literature are all part of the fare, and I'm honored to be included.
My own talk is a two-part talk. First up—a
Handling the Truth memoir workshop, in which participants will have a chance to learn about truth and consequences, sentences and ideas. Following a short break, I'll be discussing 19th century Philadelphia, particularly my three Philadelphia books—
Flow, Dangerous Neighbors, and
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. There will be workshops here as well—fun exercises designed to get us thinking about our city more than a century ago.
These events are free and open to the public. The photography exhibit runs all day today and tomorrow, and includes an 11:00 AM photography symposium moderated by Tom Petro tomorrow.
My event is being held on Sunday in the Choir Room, Chapel, Lower Level. We'll start at 1:30 and go through 4:00 PM. Stay for both sessions, or come just for one. Teens and adults are both welcome (and, indeed, encouraged).
Back in August 2011 I posted here under the title "
How great is Susan Campbell Bartoletti?" I reported on how this award-winning writer for young adults had saved me in Orlando, FL, just ahead of an ALAN panel (we shared the dais; she mastered the technology; she made people laugh; I spoke, sorrowfully, of a massive fire). Later I wrote of Susan's kindness in driving many miles to appear in the
Young Writers Take the Park event I'd orchestrated with The Spiral Book Case in Manayunk. And then one day I made a
video for Susan and her Penn State students, about the crafting of dialogue in two of my novels.
But my very favorite Susan BC moment remains that August day in 2011 when we sat in a top-floor room of the Kelly Writers House on the Penn campus talking about our mutual love for 1871. Yes. Truly. How many people will I ever meet who will love that year as much as I do? Susan was deep into writing her
Diary of Pringle Rose for the fabulous and famous Scholastic Dear America series (if you want to know how fabulous,
here is Taylor Swift talking about the impact the series had on her). I was finishing my prequel to my Centennial Philadelphia novel,
Dangerous Neighbors—a boy's adventure, an 1871 Philly story, due out in early May called
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. In the cool shadows of Kelly Writers House Susan and I spoke of fires and trains and schools and prejudices, about classified ads and research. We will forever be bound by friendship and a year, by an afternoon at Penn.
Early this morning I had the great pleasure of reading Pringle Rose's story, which is secondarily titled
Down the Rabbit Hole and was officially launched a few days ago. It's a pure pleasure of a read; it's vintage Susan. It's a story that takes its fourteen-year-old heroine out of the coal mining country of Pennsylvania (where Susan herself lives) and toward Chicago during a hot, dangerous summer. Pringle has lost two parents to an accident she doesn't quite understand. She has a brother, Gideon, who is different and lovable and deserving of her care. She boards a train with her brother in tow and believes herself destined for a new and elevated life. But the past catches up with these brave journey-ers. And then there's the heat of that summer, that devastating heat, that will crescendo to the Great Fire of Chicago.
Scholastic knew what it was doing when it invited Susan to write this Diary, and I am confident that it will now reach countless thousands—reach, entertain, and enlighten. Susan and I are nursing a fantasy that we'll have an 1871 Celebration Day together. Between now and then, I'm celebrating her.
(The photo above, by the way, is the street where my own 1871 character William lived. I'm still trying to figure out a way to get William and Pringle together.)
In just a few days,
Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial Philadelphia novel, will be released by Egmont USA as a paperback, with a bound-in teacher's guide. A few weeks after that, in mid-February,
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, an 1871 Philadelphia novel that features
Dangerous Neighbors' own best-loved boy, William, will be released by New City Community Press/Temple University Press.
Dr. Radway's introduces, among many other Philadelphia places, Eastern State Penitentiary. In this scene (below) William and his best friend, Career, are making their way toward the old prison, which was known back then as Cherry Hill. They're going to keep William's father company, in the only way they know how.
The image above was taken two years ago, when I was in the midst of my research for this book.
Career pulls a stone out of his trouser pocket, drops it to the street, and kicks it ahead to William, who smacks it crosswise and up, stepping back to let two twin girls in dresses like pink parasols pass, their mother stern in blue. Career lopes and knocks the stone to where William would be if he wasn’t still staring at the girls, both of them with the identical ginger hair and jewel eyes, neither somehow like the other. Neither, mostly, like the mother, who casts her opinion on William and hurries her exotic procession along.
William feels the heat in his face and runs for the stone. He smacks it hard Career’s way. The game stays good between them now—past Spring Garden and Brandywine, Green, Mt. Vernon, Wallace, all the way to Cherry Hill, where finally they stop and stand in the long skirt of the prison’s shadows, its massive gothic gloom. Cherry Hill runs the full block and back, two-hundred feet in the east-west direction, four crenellated towers on its front face and a watchman high, looking for trouble. Career works another match into the shallow bowl of his pipe, and it takes. The tobacco flares sweet.
“You going to call to him, then?” Career asks, after a while.
“Walls too thick.”
“You going to try it anyway?”
“Your whistling,” William says, “goes a longer way.”
Career blows the smoke of his pipe through the spaces between his teeth. He clears his throat and finds his song, and it carries. William closes his eyes and imagines his Pa inside—past the vaulted doors and the iron gates, beneath the eye of the warden, and of God. People are puny at Cherry Hill. People are locked away to consider what they’ve done.
“You think he can hear that?” Career asks now, stopping his song.
“Keep on.”
Career picks the song back up, and William stands there in the shadows, at his best friend’s side, trying to see Pa in his mind’s eye. “Don’t do it, Pa,” Francis had warned him, Ma, mostly. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
Career whistles a professional melody. William hears what he thinks is the wind, but it’s that bird winging in close, that dove tucking its wings then letting them go, its rise and its angling in effortless. Career stops his song and looks up. The bird goes on, north and west—a free line across the prison wall and out, toward the river.
Cherry Hill still locked up tight as a vault.
Before
Small Damages and
You Are My Only, there was
Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont), my Centennial Philadelphia story featuring twin sisters, a boy named William, and the fair that ushered in the idea of the modern.
Yesterday, the paperback edition of
Dangerous Neighbors arrived, complete with its fancy discussion/teaching guide. The book will go on sale in a month or so, just ahead of the release of
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the prequel that features 1871 Philadelphia and that animal-rescuing boy named William.
My thanks to Elizabeth Law and the Egmont team.
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Beth Kephart ,
on 10/25/2012
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It's been quite a week here, as proof pages for both
Handling the Truth and
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent arrive. Over the next few days I'll turn my attention to the second, my 1871 prequel to
Dangerous Neighbors, which features Eastern State Penitentiary, Baldwin Locomotive Works, Schuylkill River races, George Childs, a famous murder, and a boy named William who rescues animals for a living.
This book also features illustrations by William Sulit and a book design by Elizabeth Parks (and copy editing by my blogger friend Quinn Colter). It will be released this coming March from New City Community Press/Temple University.
A few days ago, I was tagged. Not by birders or rare fish scouts, but by
Helen W. Mallon, author, most recently, of the short story "Casual Day at the Crazy House." Helen herself had been previously tagged by YA author
Catherine Stine. Check these fine writers out for yourself.
Being tagged means joining the Next Big Thing Gang (I think we all get T-shirts, and I have requested a V-neck with just a splash of bling). It means answering questions, specifically the ones below. And so here I am, talking about
Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent. Because it is coming out in March (New City Community Press/Temple University Press). Because it is about the city that I love (Philadelphia) and its history (1871) and its fabled institutions and people (Eastern State Penitentiary, the Schuylkill River races, Baldwin Locomotive Works, George Childs, Matthias Baldwin, Norris House, Preston Retreat). Because it is illustrated by my husband.
Wait. Did this intro just answer all the questions? It's early morn. I'm getting there.
What is the working title of your book?The title of this book, for real and for good, is Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. See the cover above? We're not changing it. Where did the idea come from for the book? William, my hero, is obsessed with the medicines of the time, for he is searching for a cure for his heartbroken mother. Dr. Radway lived in Manayunk and his Sarsaparilla Resolvent was world-renowned for curing everything, perhaps even sleep insufficiency, in which case I am ordering me up a bottle. Today we know this medicinal magic as root beer. Does anybody have a glass of ice handy? What genre does your book fall under? This lady, who is not a fan of labeling fiction, would, if forced to do it, describe Dr. Radway as historical fiction for middle grade/young adult/adult readers with two teen male protagonists at its heart. Simply and non-boastfully put, Dr. Radway is a good book for everyone. I am so good at non-boastful. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? There's a young prostitute, named Pearl, who is integral to this story. She's tough, she's big-hearted, and she saves the day. Jennifer Lawrence is my Pearl. William has a grieving, beautiful mother—Marisa Tomei or Amy Adams. As for William and his best friend, Career, Alex Shaffer (Win Win) and Josh Hutcherson (Hunger Games) Josh looks exactly like my Career (so long as you give him a pipe to suck on). Alex was brilliant in Win Win, which is, by the way, one of my favorite indies and the brain child of my friend Mary Jane Skalski. But I digress. There are others in the story—the ghost of an older brother (not yet cast), a father in prison (Sean Penn, but younger), and a little sprite of a girl who lives next door. Let's give that role to Mackenzie, the youngest dancer in that whacky reality TV show, Dance Moms. She's so cute I have to stop myself from reaching through the TV and pinching her cheeks. But why am I watching that show anyway? And, since we are on the topic, Are mothers really like that? Have you ever met anyone like any of those moms? Okay, back to the topic.What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Shouldn't this question be first? And have I ever one-sentenced anything? In my life? Sorry, Blog Game Rule Makers. I'm going with the full paragraph:
The year is 1871, and the place is Bush Hill, Philadelphia—home to the Baldwin Locomotive Works and a massive, gothic prison, home to William Quinn and his Ma, Essie, barely surviving in the wake of family tragedy. Pa Quinn is doing time in the penitentiary. Brother Francis has been murdered by a cop. Ma has lost something that she can’t forgive herself for, and William, fourteen, has been left to manage. Featuring a best friend named Career, a goat named Daisy, and a blowzy who goes by the name of Pearl, Dr. Radway’s Sarsaparilla Resolvent captures the rhythms and smells of an extraordinary era and is flavored by the oddities of historic personalities and facts. Terrible accidents will happen and miraculous escapes. Shams masquerade as the truth. And readers of Dangerous Neighbors will finally learn just who this boy with a talent for saving lost animals is, and how he learned the art of rescue. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? Since this book is a prequel to Dangerous Neighbors, my 1876 Philadelphia Centennial novel, I have been working with my lead character, William, for more than seven years. A requited love affair, fictionally speaking.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I try not to compare.Who or What inspired you to write this book? My love for Philadelphia history. My absolute love for William. I could not let him go. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Are you suggesting that I have not yet piqued reader interest? Maybe what you are really asking is, Who copy edited this book? In that case, I have an answer for you. Quinn Colter. She's a brilliant young reader who has followed my blog for years. She will be, upon graduation, a force to be reckoned with in publishing. Dr. Radway is her first copy edited book. Who have you tagged?Okay, this question was easy! I am tagging my glorious friends, listed in alphabetical order. Aren't they great friends, though? Aren't I lucky? Look for their posts in the coming week. They have until next Thursday at 5:35 AM. Because that's just how we roll here. If I have not properly alphabetized, please forgive me. It is now 5:45 AM in the morning.Kimberley Griffiths LittleElisa LudwigElizabeth MosierKelly SimmonsKM Walton
I returned from Asbury Park and Bruce Springsteen Appreciators to an email from Quinn Colter, a young friend destined for a big career as a copy editor. I had invited Quinn to join the
Dr. Radway editorial team, and she had—plying my text with wonderful questions and delightful commentary (it seems that Career, one of my primary characters, has won our Quinn Colter over).
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, my 1871 Philadelphia novel about Bush Hill, Eastern State Penitentiary, Baldwin Locomotive Works, Schuylkill River races, George W. Childs, and two best friends, now goes into design and will be released next March by New City Community Press/Temple University Press.
I left the desk at last to take a walk. Meandering through my streets, I discovered Kathleen, a very special green-eyed woman, who had, she told me, read
Dangerous Neighbors a few weeks ago. Kathleen grew up in Philadelphia at a time when circus elephants walked the streets of Erie and Broad, and in
Dangerous Neighbors, a book about Philadelphia during the 1876 Centennial, she discovered many details that resonated with her. Standing there in the glorious afternoon sun, Kathleen told me stories about the Oppenheimer curling iron, the fifteen-cent round-trip trolley, the ferry one took from Philadelphia across the Delaware, and the shore years ago. Kathleen's grandmother was an eleven-year-old child during the time of the Centennial, and so Kathleen remembered, too, whispers of the great exposition.
I had published
an essay about the Jersey shore in the
Philadelphia Inquirer a few weeks ago, and that story prompted for Kathleen memories of her own trips to the sea as a child. We spoke, then, of this, too—this shared geography that has been transformed by time and yet remains a signifier, a home.
As much as I often wish I were back in the city living the urban life, I am tremendously grateful for the streets where I live. I am grateful, too, for the people who enter my life—for Quinn now on the verge of her career, and for Kathleen with her storehouse of memories.
I call Philadelphia "my" city, but it does not, of course, belong to me; nothing is ever for keeps. But I did grow up visiting my mother's mother and father in southwest Philly, and I went to Penn across the river, and I lived first in the Art Museum area, then on Camac (two different apartments) and next on Gaskill, and I've returned, repeatedly, to take photographs, to collect stories, to teach. If any city were, for a moment, mine, it would be this one.
But now this place I love will also belong to my son, as he moves into
a new job and apartment among the gridded streets. Last night, perhaps the nicest night Philadelphia has seen all summer long, we took him to
a special dinner. I, being my perhaps overly enthusiastic self, suggested a before-dinner stroll down near Delancey, where much of
Dangerous Neighbors takes place, before working back toward Rittenhouse Square and east.
I caught the moment with my tiny Canon.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 8/17/2012
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Many years ago I wrote an odd book called
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Flow had grown out of my love for my city, was supported (in all its strangeness) by a
Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, and was published by the best possible house for a book such as that one:
Temple University Press. Micah Kleit, my editor, gave the book room, while Gary Kramer, a savvy and delightful publicist with deep Philly roots, gave it wings. Not so run-of-the-mill in tone, structure, and voice, but always Philly true,
Flow sits today—slender and alive—on my shelves, thanks to Micah's picking up the phone when I called.
From
Flow grew
Dangerous Neighbors (Laura Geringer Books/Egmont USA), my 1876 Centennial novel. Katherine, a bereaving twin, stands at the heart of that story, but just one step to her left is a character named William, a young man from the poor side of town who rescues lost animals for a living. William was a character who never left my thoughts. He lived with me long after
Dangerous Neighbors ended.
Soon I was conjuring William as a young adolescent living among the machines of Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1871 Philadelphia. His brother has been murdered by a cop (the murder based on a real Philadelphia event), his father is in Eastern State Penitentiary, and it is up to William to protect his heart-and-soul-sickened mom. William gets some help in this from his best friend, Career, who has a job with the newspaper man, George Childs. He gets help, too, from a prostitute named Pearl, and from the little girl next door. He thinks he's getting help from the variety of medicines (that sarsaparilla resolvent among them) that were being pedaled at the time. And those ginger-haired twin girls from
Dangerous Neighbors? They're in and out of his poor neighborhood, thanks to their feminist mother.
After I'd finished writing this novel, I sat and thought for a time about publishing options. I wanted a true Philadelphia home for this book. I wanted an opportunity to work with a house that might connect this story to Philadelphia school children, museum goers, history buffs. It wasn't long before I was writing a note to Micah at Temple University Press, who thought the story sounded interesting and encouraged me to send it on to his colleague, Stephen Parks. Steve is a Syracuse University professor who also runs
New City Community Press. NCCP began as a literacy project in the public schools of Philadelphia, won a major national grant in support of its ethos, and remains today committed to telling community stories. I liked the sound of all that, and so, last February, I met Steve in Chestnut Hill and we talked. There's been no question (in my mind) about this book's future ever since.
Today I can officially announce that
Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent will be released next March from New City Community Press and distributed by my friends at Temple University Press. It will be illustrated by my husband, William Sulit, who also designed the book's cover, revealed for the first time here; for a glimpse of interior art, go
here and for more of Bill's a
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, my 1871 prequel to
Dangerous Neighbors, will (I'm happy to report) be illustrated by my husband. That makes this book our third collaboration. Bill illustrated my co-authored corporate fairytale
Zenobia and took the majority of the photographs that appeared in my fifth memoir,
Ghosts in the Garden. He began early sketches for this project more than a year ago, with
this image. I am especially happy about this collaboration, for I have long been mapping
the rise of illustrated middle grade/YA books. This is a fragment of the image that will most likely grace the cover of the book. William, who was introduced in
Dangerous Neighbors as a boy who rescues lost animals for a living, is the star of this story. Early on in the story he decides to keep this unclaimed goat, whom he names Daisy and who travels with him on his varied adventures.
I can't wait to see this book come to life. I am especially eager to share it with Philadelphians who today walk the (much transformed) streets that William claims as his own.
Less than a year from now,
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the 1871 prequel to
Dangerous Neighbors, will make its way into the world. This is William's story; this is his world, Bush Hill. Look for more here on the particulars in a few weeks.
But before any book can go out into the world, it has to be a book we love. It had been a while since I'd read the "final" book through, and as I did (a few days ago) I felt uneasy. Work needed to be done. I wanted to do it. And so, today, my travels finally done, I am at work on the story—rebuilding its opening pages to heighten tension and momentum, deepening a character I named Career, and revisiting my notes on Eastern State Penitentiary, where much of the story takes place.
This is a photo of the room about which I write, taken a year or so ago.
For much of last year I worked on a book that took me deep inside the world of 1871 Philadelphia—the clank of Baldwin machines, the boats on the
Schuylkill, the innards of Eastern State Penitentiary, the rattle of a newsroom, the world of William, first introduced in
Dangerous Neighbors.
I wrote a book. My husband made drawings. And then I stood back and thought. What next?
Today I am having a preliminary meeting about this book of mine, this character I love, this Philadelphia to which I will always be true. I don't know what will happen, but I do know this: Sometimes we have to step away to know what it is we should be stepping toward.
Last night, my enormously gracious hostesses at St. Joseph's University—Ann Green and April Lindner—shared their students with me. Some had read
Dangerous Neighbors. Some had read
You Are My Only. All of them, many in the graduate program, spend their days thinking about words and writing.
I talked about the future of young adult literature. I also continued to talk about sentences. Why they matter. How they are crafted. What we put at risk if we, as a nation, a culture, foist only plots upon one another, and not song.
Yesterday on this blog,
I shared some of my own sentences in the making—a beginning place, a mid place—as well as a reminder of a NaNo
contest I am conducting. Last night, at St. Joe's, I read from that same
James Wood essay in
The New Yorker that I celebrated here not long ago—that lesson in beautiful writing.
Today I mean only to share these few words from a Pablo Neruda poem. These are simple lines, simple words. No pyrotechnics, no self-conscious gloss, no unnecessary intricacies. Good sentences, I am saying, don't have to be complex. But they must always be true.
From Neruda:
Only the shadows
know
the secrets
of closed houses,
only the forbidden wind
and the moon that shines
on the roof
It is always a great privilege to spend time among students and teachers, and today I stood among these beautiful ladies in their cardinal red blazers to talk about
Dangerous Neighbors, its prequel, and the making of books. Following a presentation of Centennial images and illustrations, I met individually with each class to go deeper, to think harder. There were questions about titles, covers, favorite characters, fires. Questions about writer's block and process. Conversations about twinship and sisterhood.
This beautiful day was arranged for me by Kerri Schuster, the school's Head of English (who is pictured here, at the podium). Thank you, Kerri, and thanks to all the girls for your thoughtfulness, honesty, and spontaneity. It was a pleasure. I'm going to wear my Country Day sweatshirt (gorgeous) in style.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 9/23/2011
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I'm going to spend this beautiful day in the company of the students and faculty of the Country Day School of the Sacred Heart, which chose
Dangerous Neighbors as its summer read.
Before I head out, I wanted to share these few things:
First, readers of this blog know how moved I was by the
Logan Schweiter Fundraiser, which took place at Club La Maison. Today, at Generocity.org, in a story called
"A Spectacular Act of Love," I report on the remarkable efforts of literally hundreds of people who together raised an extraordinary amount of money on behalf of a young local teen still recovering from a near drowning following a storm.
Second, yesterday morning I had a chance to read the
Vanity Fair story "The Book on Publishing," which can also be found on Nook and Kindle reading apps at vfr.com/go/ebooks. This extended essay by Keith Gessen takes an instructive look behind the scenes of one of the largest book auctions in recent history, which yielded Chad Harbach, a first-time author, a $665,000 advance from legendary editor Michael Pietsch for the novel (ten years in the making) called
The Art of Fielding. Anyone who ever wondered just how major parts of the industry work will have questions answered here.
Finally, a bouquet of gratitude to Medieval Bookworm, for
her eloquent words about
You Are My Only, and a thank you to
Caribousmom for letting me know those words exist. I am, as always, very grateful.
To the Country Day School I now go.
Between a lot of work and a lousy flu, I've been at work on yet another read through of my
Dangerous Neighbors prequel,
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. My talented husband and business partner has, meanwhile, been at work on the illustrations.
From within the heat of this fury (and fever), then, I share with you an early fragment from the sketches in progress.
It's all going off to my agent, Amy Rennert, today.
After playing a much-needed bit of hooky at the Jersey shore yesterday (not
that Jersey Shore, believe me), I came home, woke early, and wrote the final pages of
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the
Dangerous Neighbors prequel. I rarely write with a book's closing pages in mind. This time, always, I knew where I was headed. I've printed the whole thing out now and will take it to a quiet place to read. But since I have reworked all thirty-three chapters (save the last one) at least a dozen times each, I think I'm in a pretty good place.
This, of course, is William's story—that boy who rescues animal for a living and, in 1876, in the pages of
Dangerous Neighbors, befriends Katherine during one terrifying day at the Centennial. The year this time in 1871, and a primary scene takes place in the room above.
I have loved every single second of researching and writing this story. I cannot wait to share it with the world.
In the meantime, I've got corporate work to do and, thanks to the number of schools that seem to be assigning my Juarez novel,
The Heart Is Not a Size, to their students, I'm about to put together a teacher's guide for that book. It is extraordinary—and extremely reassuring—that books do find their way in this world, even if we're not entirely sure how to help them get there.
The worst thing about being so caught up in finishing your own book (I am, I think, 5,000 words shy of a complete
Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA) prequel) is that when you steal time away for literature (away from your job, away from your duties, away from the laundry), you can't steal enough time for the work of others.
But two days ago, I downloaded my first NetGalley advanced reading copy—
The Forgotten Waltz by the truly brilliant, often disturbing, completely original Anne Enright. I'm only thirty pages in. I'll be doing a full report here (as well as an interview with Ms. Enright, come October). But on this gloriously weathered day, might I just suggest that this, these opening lines, is how books should begin. The voice is true and firm and daring. There is no barrier between writer and reader. Present is past and past is present, and who doesn't want to know what has happened?
i met him in my sister's garden in Enniskerry. That is where I saw him first. There was nothing fated about it, though I add in the late summer light and the view. I put him at the bottom of my sister's garden, in the afternoon, at the moment the day begins to turn. Half five maybe. It is half past five on a Wicklow summer Sunday when I see Sean for the first time. There he is, where the end of my sister's garden becomes uncertain.
You want to know what I like in books? I like this.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 8/19/2011
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A.S. King,
Dangerous Neighbors,
Hitler Youth,
ALAN Orlando,
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I first met Susan in Orlando, FL, last November, on this very (photographed) day. We were scheduled to speak on an ALAN panel—Susan about her wildly brilliant
They Called Themselves the K.K.K, me about the Centennial era that had inspired
Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA). My PDF presentation had not, I discovered minutes before I was to take the stage, been imported to the proper conference techno places, and, in the crazy
Oh no buzz that followed that fine finding, Susan stepped in. She fixed the problem. The crisis was no more.
Susan spoke before I did to the gathered YA crowd. She was so smart, so funny, so wise that if I had not just been saved by her in the excruciating moments leading up to the panel, I might have been jealous. No, that's not true. I'm never jealous when a real talent is in my midst. I'm just proud, as a human being, that she exists.
Ever since Orlando, Susan and I have been trying to see each other again. This past Wednesday, as some of you know, I put the corporate pressures aside, threw caution to the wind, and trained down to the University of Pennsylvania. Susan and I would spend the next several hours walking the campus, sitting in one of my former classrooms, taking charge of an unhappy soda machine, exclaiming over
Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and munching through a tossed salad (but not the peaches we had jointly hoped for). We talked about the things we love. Truly great writing—"crunchy" she calls sentences she celebrates. Landscape as story. Honest and earned research—the kind that digs beneath whatever a Google search can deliver. Reconstruction America. The history of Pennsylvania. Smart, kind editors. Course design. Teaching. Students. Our children. Judging book contests (we both chaired a Young People's Literature Jury for the National Book Awards, we discovered.) We were walking to Susan's car when she mentioned that she had recently been talking with Markus Zusak as part of a
PEN American Center PENpal program. The Markus Zusak? I asked. Mr.
The Book Thief?But of course that was the one, for Susan, too, has written of that Nazi Germany in her widely praised (go to
her website and find out more for yourself)
Hitler Youth.
I have so many things I want to ask Susan. So much I can learn from her. But for now I am and always will be grateful for our day together. For locating, in this turbulent, unstable world of ours, such a fully engaged, deeply seeking mind.
Well, here I am, fighting for every blooming second alone to write my Dangerous Neighbors (Egmont USA) prequel—a book featuring brothers and two boy best friends, a murder and its avenging, a stint in a terrible prison, the rescue of animals—and here this wise and lovely soul sits, in a room somewhere, talking about why we don't have more teen boy readers, and why we need them, and what we (as a society and publishing community) can do about it.
I have three corporate projects I have to finish today so that I can turn (secretly, feverishly) to the 20,000th word of my work in progress.
I'm letting this young woman speak for me.
For two months, I allowed myself to grow lost inside the
Dangerous Neighbors prequel that I'm writing. Let the research take me where it would, let myself obsess over William and his troubles, took up residence with secondary characters, old machines, hominy men. You can't write a book if you can't get lost, and a book won't breathe—can't breathe—until you've followed loose ends, unraveled tangents, stayed the purposeful course of not precisely knowing. You have to write what you won't keep to find what is worth keeping. Lostness is foundness, in writing.
It wasn't until today, then, that I printed the 50 pages I have written and sat down with them in a fan-assisted room (oh, this weather). I was surprised by what I had. I was intrigued by what was missing. And I knew, sure as I know anything about tensions and rhythms and novelistic pacing, that a big event was needed, round about page 24.
"What are you working on?" my son asked, about two hours in.
"Listen to this?" I asked him. He sat near the fan and I read.
"Very interesting," he said, when I was done. The arch in his eyebrow was lifted higher. "Going to be a good one."
I knew Dear Reader was a happening place months ago, when I was invited to stand in as a guest columnist for Suzanne Beecher. Dear Reader is where a book-reading community gets built, where book clubs find their inspiration, and where conversations gather speed and force. For
my own guest column, I wrote about the young people I've met in my time as a young adult novelist—the passions they stir and the things they teach, the many ways that I am hopeful for and with them.
It was a special opportunity, and so I did something I've never done before—offered all six of my young adult books (
the seventh,the Seville-based
Small Damages, won't be out until next summer) as a summer giveaway. And oh, what a response we have had. I've heard from school principals and librarians, grandmothers and moms, fathers and grandfathers, uncles and aunts. I've heard from young writers and young readers, students on the verge of college and students on the verge of applying to master's degree programs. I've received notes from all across the country and all around the world. Many readers have asked for YA books featuring a male teen; I'm
6,000 words into writing one of those. Many described their particular passions, their favorite books.
I had originally thought that I would give all six books to a single winner, sweepstakes style, but as I read these notes through and considered the huge volume of mail, it occurred to me that there were some very right and particular titles for some very particular readers. Here, then, are the winners, with the lines or thoughts that triggered my own "I have just the book for them" responses. Please know, all of you, that I read and considered and valued and had a very hard time choosing winners. I hope you'll look for books that sound interesting to you and let me know what you think.
Undercover, my first young adult novel, about a young, Cyrano-like poet and her discovery of her own beauty, to 14-year-old Kyla Rich, who wrote,
"My 12-year-old sister and I love to read. .... you can never read too much, especially with how much you can learn from reading: Learn about the world, about scholarly things that you'd learn in school, or, sometimes, about yourself. I never really knew why I read so much or why I liked it but, as I read your Dear Reader, I realized why. I read to understand, to know beyond myself. Exactly what you said in your Dear Reader. I guess that might be another reason I write. My sister and I are writers, unpublished of course, and we write to craft the kind of books we like to read, to give someone joy, to help someone, maybe even start a craze. We write for even that ONE person who likes our books, even if it is just one. At least someone cares enough to read." House of Dance, about Rosie's quest to find a final gift for her grandfather (and her discovery of a wonderful cast of ballroom dancers), to Patricia Corcoran, who wrote,
"I'm 63 years old and have read for as long as I can remember. Except for when I was growing up, I didn't read Young Adult books. I don't know why, but I didn't. About 3 years ago, I started reading them and thoroughly enjoy the ones I've read so far. I have 2 grandchildren, Gregory who is 9 and Emily who
I am stealing a meme from dear, so-talented, and missed
Eating a Tangerine with this up-to-the-moment report on what is making me happy.
First, the cherished memories of
my trip to the BEA this past week. Thank you, so many of you, for being such an integral part of my adventure, thank you Armchair BEA for the love, and thank you Florinda for
the conversation.Second, the news that
Dangerous Neighbors has been chosen as the summer read by a lovely local private school. I have so wanted that for this book of mine, and I am grateful.
Third, the happy reality that, after allowing myself to stall for a few days (as I imagine most authors waiting to hear about circulating manuscripts do), I have found my way back to my prequel-in-progress to
Dangerous Neighbors. Research proved to be the key. I have lucked onto something astonishing and juicy—a little known fact that will give my story heft, suspense, momentum, and (I'll toss the word in there) thrills. I have myself a riveting something. Now I just have to write it.
Fourth, spending time at the Devon Horse Show, taking photographs of
horses,
children,
riders, and
the big jumpers. Today I'll be photographing the carriages that are rolling down my street (two just did, so I interrupted this blog to catch them) as well as the famous puppy contest.
Fifth, spending an hour with
Kim, my former student, at the show yesterday. There she is, petting a three-month-old mini. Both are, I think, beyond words.
Finally, receiving and reading the richest imaginable e-mails from my son, now in his fourth day in London. The Brits are treating that great guy of mine exquisitely well, and he is turning most every hour into something worthy of a story. In exactly two weeks I'll be there, in London, too. Laughing, I'm certain. And listening.
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Just saw this book yesterday on Net Galley! I so wish this series had been around when I was a girl. Still, I've loved these books as a girl would and shared them with many a student.
Beth, I love the story of how you and I met, first in Florida and then in Philly. Thank you for this lovely post about our friendship and my book.