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By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 1/12/2015
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The only thing benign about Herman Koch's
The Dinner is the title—which, like almost everything else about the story, is designed to throw the reader off.
"My Dinner with Andre" this is not. Politics, culture, morality, and childrens' lives are at stake (only the first three were at stake in the movie). The questions: What would we do to protect a child who has committed a heinous act? What would we do if we had somehow (implicitly, explicitly) encouraged or modeled or genetically produced an evil creature? Who do we love and why do we love them and what does familial happiness look like? At what cost, secrets?
All this unfolds over the course of a meal in an expensive restaurant. Two brothers and their wives have come to High Civility to discuss a horrific, seamy event. Paul, whose jealousy and creepiness are transparent from the start, tells us the story. He tells us who he is, even as he repeatedly cautions that many parts of the tale are not our business.
It's a brutal, brilliant book (compared to
Gone Girl, I think it greatly supersedes it). It's not the kind of book I typically read, it oozes with contemptible people and scenes, but I was riveted by Koch's ability to see his vision through—so entirely relentlessly. And then I got to the paperback's extra matter and an essay by Koch himself called "The First Sentence."
For me, a book is already finished once I've come up with the first sentence. Or rather: the first two sentences. Those first two sentences contain everything I need to know about the book. I sometimes call them the book's "DNA." As long as every sentence that comes afterward contains that same DNA, everything is fine.
Koch's first two sentences, in case you are wondering, are: "We were going out to dinner. I won't say which restaurant, because next time it might be full of people who've come to see whether we're there." And absolutely, yes. The entire book is bracketed within them.
I believe in the power of first sentences, too. I think about them as setters of mood and tone. I wondered, though, whether I could say, about any of my novels, that the entire story rests within the first two sentences. I decided to conduct a mini-experiment. I grabbed a few books from my shelf. Opened to page one. Conducted a self-interview and assessment. I had to cheat in one place only (
Dr. Radway), where more than two sentences were required. Otherwise, I'm thinking Koch is onto something here. (And if it is true for my books, I suspect it is true for yours, too.)
From within the fissure I rise, old as anything. The gravel beneath me slides. — Flow
Once I saw a vixen and a dog fox dancing. It was on the other side of the cul-de-sac, past the Gunns' place, through the trees, where the stream draws a wet line in spring. — Undercover
In the summer my mother grew zinnias in her window boxes and let fireflies hum through our back door. She kept basil alive in ruby-colored glasses and potatoes sprouting tentacles on the sills. — House of Dance
There are the things that have been and the things that haven't happened yet. There is the squiggle of a line between, which is the color of caution, the color of the bird that comes to my window every morning, rattling me awake with the hammer of its beak. — Nothing but Ghosts
What I remember now is the bunch of them running: from the tins, which were their houses. Up the white streets, which were the color of bone. — The Heart Is Not a Size
From up high, everything seems to spill from itself. Everything is shadowed. — Dangerous Neighbors
My house is a storybook house. A huff-and-a-puff-and-they'll-blow-it-down house. — You Are My Only
The streets of Seville are the size of sidewalks, and there are alleys leaking off from the streets. In the back of the cab, where I sit by myself, I watch the past rushing by. — Small Damages
There was a story Francis told about two best friends gone swimming, round about Beiderman's Point, back of Petty's Island, along the crooked Delaware. "Fred Spowhouse," he'd say, his breath smelling like oysters and hay. "Alfred Edwards." The two friends found drowned and buckled together, Spowhouse clutched up tight inside Edwards's feckless arms. — Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent
We live with ghosts. We live with thugs, dodgers, punkers, needle ladies, pork knuckle. — Going Over
If you could see me. If you were near. — One Thing Stolen
Sidenote: In every case, the first two sentences of my books existed within the book in draft one. Sometimes they weren't posted right up front in early drafts. But they always eventually got there.
I have some interesting programs scheduled in the weeks and months ahead.
Among other things, I'll be helping to kick off The Head and The Hand's fabulous
4th Floor Chapbook Series this coming Monday, with a reading from
Going Over. On May 24th, I'll help celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Main Line's newest, thriving independent bookstore, Main Point Books, with a
Going Over signing.
In September, meanwhile, I'll be joining Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb at the Pennsylvania Library Association Convention, to talk nonfiction and
Handling the Truth. Then, in mid-October, I'll be giving two keynote addresses on River Dreams, to celebrate the Schuylkill as the PA River of the Year. In November, I'll head down to Penn to sit on a Young Adult Fiction Panel during Homecoming Weekend.
Finally, next spring, I'll hop a train to Washington, DC, and meet with the students of St. Alban School, a boarding school situated on the campus of the National Cathedral. The 7th and 8th graders will have read
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River. Many have already read
Dr. Radway's Sarsparilla Resolvent. I'm looking forward to it all.
May 12, 2014Science Leadership Academy
GOING OVER reading
in conjunction with The Head and the Hand Press
Philadelphia, PA
May 24, 2014, 3 -4 PM
GOING OVER signing
Main Point Books
Bryn Mawr, PA
September 29, 2014, 2:00 PMNonfiction Panel with Stephen Fried and Neal Bascomb
PaLA Convention
Lancaster County Convention Center
Lancaster County, PA
October 14, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Montgomery County Community College West Campus
Community Room
October 16, 7 PM
River of the Year Keynote
Schuylkill River Heritage Area
Trinity Urban Life Center
Philadelphia, PA
November 1, 2014, 4:00 PM
University of Pennsylvania Homecoming Panel
Young Adult Fiction Panel
Kelly Writers House
Philadelphia, PA
April 10, 2015
Talking about FLOW, the required 7th grade read
St. Albans School
Washington, DC
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 4/2/2014
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Oh, those beautiful pottery ladies. There I was, minding my own clay business, when I saw Karen the Good, who also goes by Queen of Wayne, sneak by. What is that lady doing? I wondered, then went back to trying to figure out how to make my latest project stable.
The next time I looked up, the ladies had gathered around and they were singing. They were singing a birthday song.
How I love them all.
(Bill, the honorary pottery lady, took the photo of the group, but I love him, too.)
So a huge thank you to my friends, and to Karen, for remembering—and for singing—so poignantly well. And the timing is—well—something else, for just this morning I had been remembering a surprise party my mother had thrown for me when I was sixteen years old. Somehow she'd gotten Jim Clancy, Radnor High basketball star, to my basement, along with ice skaters and other friends. I had not had the slightest inkling that something was in the works. I miss my mother on many days, and always on my birthday, and there were the ladies, on this day, stepping in.
So who was the teen me? I write of her here, on
Dear Teen Me, today. The piece begins like this:
You do not have to be good. You don’t have to try so hard. You don’t have to stay so very still inside that box that you have built up for yourself.
Life is meant for living.
Listen.
On a day in which so much kindness overflows that I hardly know what to do, or how many ways I can say thank you, I share these beautiful things as well:
Shelf Awareness shared the
Going Over trailer as the Trailer of the Day,
here. Sarah Laurence reviewed
Going Over so incredibly beautifully
here.And Melissa Firman very kindly makes room for, and say such nice things about,
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, here.
We are reviewed, in this life, by professional critics, by the Amazon anonymous, by the Goodreads communities, by the whispers we'll never hear, by the book clubs that decide yes or no, by the bloggers, by our friends.
Now and again, we hear from younger readers.
This morning I heard from Will Nash, a student in the St. Albans Lower School of Washington, DC., who had some glorious things to say about
Dr. Radway, which was one of three books given the 2014 Parrott Library Honor Award (the other two being
The Kill Order and
Wonder).
I was finishing work on the Florence novel when the news of this generous honor came in. I was, in fact, fixing some of the book's many details. And so you will appreciate how much I loved Will's immaculate review, especially these words:
If you enjoy envisioning scenes in your head, it is a great book because Beth Kephart loves to go crazy with details.I hereby declare, for now and forever, that I will always go crazy with details—and think of Will Nash when I do.
For more on Dr. Radway—and much more from Will—please click on this link. Thank you, St Albans Lower School, for choosing to read a book about my own city, Philadelphia.
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).
Earlier this summer New City Community Press/Temple University Press released a book that means so much to me—
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. It's a book about poor Philadelphia in 1871, a book about Eastern State Penitentiary, Baldwin Locomotives Works, My River (notice the caps), two best friends, and an heroic blowzy named Pearl. Among other things.
Reviewers have been extremely kind, some of their thoughts
here.
I'll be officially launching that book in just a few weeks at Radnor Memorial Library—reading from it for the first time, talking about it for the first time, sharing it, because that's what we do.
I hope you will consider joining us. Huge thanks to Pamela Sedor, who throws a wonderful party.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 3/21/2013
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Friends of this blog know how much I love California—the sun, the ocean cliffs, the people. I was so happy, therefore, to be invited to conduct a memoir workshop at the great BookPassage in Corte Madera. I'll be out there in early September, and I'd love to see you there. The details are here, below, along with a few other events that have cropped up in the meantime—events that will touch on everything from
Small Damages,
Dangerous Neighbors, and
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent to memoir writing, Philadelphia, and the boutique marketing communications firm I run.
Please join us if you can.
March 22, 2013, 5 - 7 PMPost-Penn Perspectives Panel
Sweeten Alumni House
University of Pennsylvania
March 24, 2013, 1 - 4
No-Foolin' Mega-Signing At Books of Wonder
New York, New York
For Details click here.
April 10, 2013, 7 PM
Feature Author Book Club Dinner
Harleysville Books
Harleysville, PA
May 22, 2013, 2 PM Strange and Familiar Places in YA Fiction (a panel)
Drexel University Week of WritingPhiladelphia, PA
July 27, 2013, 3:30 - 5:00 PM Launching Small Damages paperback/Memoir Workshop
with Debbie Levy
Hooray for Books
Old Town Alexandria, VA
August 6, 2013
Launching Handling the Truth
with a memoir workshop
Free Library of Philadelphia
(details to come)Philadelphia, PASeptember 7, 2013, 10 AM - noon
BookPassage Memoir Workshop
51 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA 94925October 20, 2013
Talking Memoir with Linda Joy Myers @
Rosemont College
(details to come)
The days are rarely what we imagine they will be.
The news comes in. The shock. The losses. Ordinary days, as my friend Katrina Kenison has written, are, often, the greatest gifts of all.
One of the greatest gifts I've been given in recent months is the chance to write an occasional piece for the
Inquirer—pieces about the city I unashamedly love. I don't write journalism, don't know how. I just write my heart. And I take my camera out there, too, because sometimes my lens writes the stories better than my handful of words.
This past weekend I was blessed by
the publication of a photo essay about that part of Philadelphia once known as Bush Hill. I wrote about my travels through that area years ago and the revival of Eastern State Penitentiary.
You can write all you want, take whatever photos cross your path. It's nothing without an editor and a designer. And so today I thank Kevin Ferris and his team for the layout that they chose for the front page of this past Sunday's Currents section.
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 less than two months,
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, my 1871 Philadelphia novel (and prequel to Dangerous Neighbors), will be released by New City Community Press/Temple University Press.
This illustrated book (all thanks to William Sulit) is another song to the city I love, and more about it can be found
here.
Nearly two years ago, I posted the first words of the book
here.
Today I share the whole of a very short chapter two:
Chapter Two
“I keep losing things,” Ma says to William. The room is swampy, the shadows smug. A bottle of Bitter Wine of Iron sits lidless on the near table, a sorry spoon beside it. William wipes his forehead with his sleeve and studies the single mourning dove that will not leave the sill.
“Ma,” he reminds her. “I’m still right here.”
He stands up from the chair where he’s been sitting. Measures the Bitter Wine onto the spoon while the dove watches with the flat disk of its eye. William worries briefly for the dove’s mate, disappeared on the same day that he and Ma lost Francis. The one dove staying and the other dove gone, and William’s mother dying by inches of heartache.
“Take your medicine, Ma,” he says. “Doctor made you promise.”
Nothing.
“Rejuvenation, Ma. Comfort. Says it right here on the label.”
Ma turns. She closes her eyes and leaves William standing with the thick drip of the stuff on the spoon—E.F. Kunkel’s Bitter Wine, bought with Francis’s stealings for a hard one dollar. Lifting the spoon to his own mouth, William sucks it clean, then pours himself a foul second. The mourning dove cocks its head in a sideways scold.
“Mind your own,” William tells it, but the bird just stares. Everything that’s broken is William Quinn’s to fix.
Gary Kramer, beloved publicist for my river book
Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River (Temple University Press) as well as the forthcoming
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, just sent word that
Library Journal kindly featured
Handling the Truth in its
Nonfiction Previews for August 2013.I am so happy to have this book of mine be placed among other true memoirs. I'm so grateful to Barbara Hoffert, who wrote:
Not a memoir proper, this book fits nicely with the others on this list because it’s about writing memoir. Kephart has penned five.... She’s also mastered the fiction and essay forms and currently teaches memoir writing at the University of Pennsylvania, so she’s got the skills to explain every facet of the writing process, including that crucial issue for memoirists: where does imaginative shaping stop and disregard for truth begin.
For more thoughts on memoirs, memoir making, and prompt exercises, please visit my dedicated Handling the Truth page.
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.
By:
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.
How do we ever get to be, in this life, to be the thing we want to be?
Sometimes somebody just has to give us a chance.
For as long as I have known Quinn Colter (we met shortly after I started this blog, when she was still in high school), she has wanted to be a copy editor. Words—the right words, rightly spaced and punctuated—matter to her. She studies them and celebrates them. Their mismanagement irks her. She sees herself in New York City someday, but between now and then—how? what?
Readers of this blog know
how important copy editors are to me. Quinn knows how important she has become in my life. Not long ago I made the decision to invite Quinn onto the
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent team, and so I am so happy today to announce that she will be my copy editor on this important project.
Dr. Radway is due out next March from New City Community Press/Temple University Press.
Welcome to 1871 Philadelphia, Quinn.
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
I've worked with my artist husband on two previous books—
Ghosts in the Garden (New World Library) and
Zenobia: The Curious Book of Business (Berrett-Koehler). This past year, we've been collaborating on a third—
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, an illustrated teen novel that features Philadelphia's own Baldwin Locomotive Works, Eastern State Penitentiary, the great Schuylkill River, a blowzy named Pearl, and my hero George Childs, among other places and souls. It features, as well, the odd tonics and medicines of the time—the strange promises and possible powers of herbal concoctions and flowering vines. William of
Dangerous Neighbors fame stands at the center of this novel. Two twins waft through.
This morning, my husband has completed the design of the book's cover (he has also created nearly a dozen interior illustrations), and while I cannot unveil the whole, I am happy to share this small corner of an image that perfectly captures 1871 and, at the same time, suggests the story's very modern spirit.
I am ridiculously happy about all of this. Not just that the book will exist (spring 2013). But that my fictional William was rendered by my real-life William, and that a very kind press is giving both a home.
Yesterday I sent dear Tamra Tuller of Philomel the revised Berlin novel. A few days before, HANDLING THE TRUTH went off to Lauren Marino at Gotham, and the week prior to that DR. RADWAY'S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT was emailed to its publisher, a package made complete by my husband's eleven illustrations.
It has been, in other words, a heady time—my thoughts, in overlapping intervals, inside a certain German city, circa 1983, inside a century's worth of 100 memoirs, and inside 1871 Philadelphia and the cacophony of Baldwin Locomotive Works.
But it was my office that was really showing the heat.
That space is so much neater now. It's dusted and Windexed and vacuumed, too. It's a place for starting over in, and that is what I'll be doing over the next many weeks. I'll be back at work on corporate projects. I'll be doing some teaching, some reviewing, some author interviewing, some essay writing. I'll be reading some 20 new books and celebrating them here, on my blog, with the world.
And I'll be launching SMALL DAMAGES.
It will be an untangling time. It will be awhile, I suspect, before I begin to dream about any new books.
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.
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.
I wish I could! Oh, how I wish I could.
Alas, I will be elsewhere that day! But I wish you a wonderful time!
Wonderful...and if it were a wee bit closer...I'd be there in person...as you know I love william