Introduction

Successful New York editor, Jen Gibbs, is at the top of her game with her new position at Vida House Publishing -- until a mysterious manuscript from an old slush pile appears on her desk. Turning the pages, Jen finds herself drawn into the life of Sarra, a mixed-race Melungeon girl trapped by dangerous men in the turn of the century Appalachia. A risky hunch may lead to The Story Keeper's hidden origins and its unknown author, but when the trail turns toward the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a place Jen thought she'd left behind forever, the price of a blockbuster next book deal may be higher than she's willing to pay. 

Editorial Review

No editorial review at this time.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

This is the glory hour. This is the place the magic happens.

The thought fell quietly into place, like a photographerâ??s backdrop unfurling behind the subject of a portrait. Its shim-mering folds caught my attention, bringing to mind a bit of advice from Wilda Culp, the person without whom I wouldâ??ve ended up somewhere completely different. Someplace tragic.

Itâ??s strange how one person and a handful of stories can alter a life.

The trick, Jennia Beth Gibbs, is to turn your face to the glory hours as they come. I heard it again, her deep-raspy Carolina drawl playing the unexpected music of a bygone day. The saddest thing in life is to see them only as they flit away.

Theyâ??re always a passing thing. . . .

My first afternoon in the war room at Vida House Pub-lishing was a glory hour. I felt it, had an inexplicable knowing of it, even before George Vida shuffled in the door and took his place at the head of the table to begin the weekly pub board meetingâ??my first at Vida House. This meeting would be different from all other such gatherings Iâ??d attended over the past ten years at a half-dozen companies, in a half-dozen skyscrapers, in and about Manhattan.

There was magic in the air here.

George Vida braced his hands on the table before taking his seat, his gaze strafing the room with the discernment of a leathery old goat sniffing for something to nibble on. His sur-vey paused momentarily on the pile of aging envelopes, man-uscript boxes, and rubber bandâ??wrapped papers at the far end of the conference room. The odd conglomeration, among so many other things, was Vida Houseâ??s claim to fameâ??a curi-osity Iâ??d only heard about until today. One of the few remain-ing actual slush piles in all of New York City, perhaps in all of publishing. In the age of e-mail communication, pa-per-and-print slush piles had quietly gone the way of the di-nosaurs. Digital slush is smaller, easier to manage, more effi-cient. Invisible. It gathers no dust, never achieves a patina like the slowly fading fragments in George Vidaâ??s relic.

Behold . . . Slush Mountain, the young intern whoâ??d taken me on the new-employee tour had said, adding a grandiose hand flourish. Itâ??s practically a tourist attraction. Heâ??d leaned closer then. And FYI, donâ??t call it that in front of the big boss. George Vida loves this thing. Nobody, but nobody, touches it. Nobody asks why itâ??s still taking up space in the conference area. We all just pretend itâ??s not there . . . like the elephant in the room.

Slush Mountain was an impressive elephant. It consumed a remarkable amount of territory, considering that real estate in Manhattan is always at a premium. Its peak stretched almost to the antique tin ceiling. From there, the collection slowly fanned outward toward the base, confining the conference ta-ble and chairs to the remaining three-quarters of the room.

The internâ??s information wasnâ??t new. George Vida (Iâ??d no-ticed that everyone here referred to him by both names, never one or the other) kept his mountain to remind the youngsters, hatched into an e-publishing generation, of two things: one, that unreturnable manuscripts are unreturnable because someone didnâ??t mind their pâ??s and qâ??s in terms of submission guidelines, and two, that success in publishing is about leav-ing no page unturned and no envelope unopened. Slush Mountain stood as a reminder that publishing is a labor of love, emphasis on labor. Itâ??s no small struggle to climb to a level where you might discover the next great American best-seller . . . and actually get credit for it when you do.

â??Is it everything you imagined?â? Roger leaned in from the next chair, surreptitiously indicating Slush Mountain. Roger and I had been coworkers ten years ago, starting out at a pub-lishing house that practically had its own zip code. He was straight out of Princeton, streetwise and sharp even back then, a Long Island golden boy who had publishing in his blood, while I was the doe-eyed, dark-haired newbie who looked more like an extra from Coal Minerâ??s Daughter than a New Yorker in the making.

I nodded but focused on George Vida. I wasnâ??t about to be lured into talking in pub board meeting on my very first day . . . or ogling Slush Mountain. Iâ??d never been quite sure whether Roger was a friend or the competition. Maybe that was just me being jealous. Iâ??d been pigeonholed in nonfiction and memoir for years, while Roger had managed to float from acquiring nonfiction to fiction, and back again, seemingly at will.

At thirty-one, I was starving for something . . . new. Some variety.

My cell phone chimed as a text came in, and I scrambled to silence it.

Not soon enough. Every eye turned my way. The moment seemed to last much longer than it probably did, my heart suddenly in my throat and beating at ten times the normal rate, my instinctive response to shrink, duck, back away be-fore a hand could snake out and grab my arm, compress flesh into bone. Some habits die hard, even years after youâ??ve left the place and the people behind.

I turned the sound off under the table. â??Sorry. I usually leave it in my office during meetings, but I havenâ??t unpacked yet.â? The excuse felt woefully inadequate. Doubtless, George Vidaâ??s cell phone had never busted a meeting.

A sudden shuffling, rustling, and muffled groaning circled the table, everyone seeming to prepare for something. A hor-rifying thought raced past. What if cell phones in a meeting are a firing offense? Silly, no doubt, but Iâ??d left my previous job, my apartment rent was due in a week, and over the past few years, I had sent my savings, what little there was of it, to a place where it would only prolong a bad situation.

â??Box.â? George Vida pointed to the upturned lid of a print-er-paper carton. Andrew, the intern who had given me the tour, snapped to his feet, grabbed the container, and sent it around the table. BlackBerrys, iPhones, and Droids were gen-tly but reluctantly relinquished. No one complained, but body language speaks volumes. I was the class dunce.

Perfect way to meet the rest of the coworkers. Brilliant. Theyâ??ll never forget you now. On the upside, theyâ??d probably get a laugh out of it, and it never hurt to make people laugh.

Across the table, the intern swiveled his palms up when George Vida wasnâ??t looking. He grinned ruefully, giving me what was probably a twenty-two-year-oldâ??s idea of a flirta-tious wink.

I sneered back at him in a way that hopefully said, Forget it, buddy. Youâ??re just a baby, and aside from that, I wonâ??t date anybody I work with.

Ever. Again.

The meeting got started then. The usual power play went onâ??editors with pull getting support for the bigger deals, the better deals, the deals with real potential. Various editorial team members stepped up in support of one anotherâ??s pro-jects, their alliances showing. The sales and marketing gurus leaned forward for some pitches, reclined in their chairs dur-ing others. I took note of all the dynamics, mapping the lay of the land at the foot of Slush Mountain and, quite wisely, keeping my mouth shut. Stacked in front of me, and in my office, were company catalogs, manuscripts, an iPad, and a laptop that would help bring me up to speed. I hadnâ??t gotten that far yet, but I would. As quickly as possible. Once the day wound down and the building cleared out this evening, I could dig in uninterrupted, making serious headway before drowsy eyes and a growling stomach forced me to the subway, where I would read some more on the way home.

Short night, early morning. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. By the end of the week, Iâ??d be functional. Mostly. In next Mondayâ??s pub board meeting, I could begin to contribute, a little at a time. Carefully. George Vida did not appreciate braggado-cioâ??Iâ??d done my homework. Buying projects and getting the support to make them fly off the shelves rather than fall off the shelves was a matter of gaining the favor of the old lion.

â??Hollis, if you will introduce us to the newest member of the Vida House family, weâ??ll adjourn this meeting,â? he re-quested, and suddenly I was the center of attention again.

George Vidaâ??s secretary, Hollisâ??picture Jane Hathaway from The Beverly Hillbillies, but a couple decades olderâ??rose from her chair, behind her boss and slightly to the right, her close-cropped gray hair making her thin face more angular and imposing. Iâ??d heard she had been with George Vida since 1967 when he took over the family newspaper business and began building it into the multimillion-dollar operation it was today.

Hollisâ??s long, thin fingers braced in backward arcs on the tabletop, her expression as stoic and seemingly detached as it had been that morning when sheâ??d looked over the folder of contracts and paperwork Iâ??d signed.

Her gaze swept the room. â??Jen Gibbs comes to us from the nonfiction arm of Stanislaus International. She brings ten years of experience in memoir and historical nonfiction. Her graduate work was completed at NYU, where she was the re-cipient of the Aberdeen Fellowship of Arts and Letters and the Steinbeck Fellowship. We are pleased to welcome her to the team.â? Her regard settled on me, though she looked nei-ther pleased nor unhappy. â??If you will share a few facts about yourself that are not on the dossier, Jen, we will begin the process of getting to know you.â?

â??Thank you.â? I did a split-second mental debate on wheth-er to sit or stand, then decided standing made more sense, as I could see the whole table that way, and making connections with coworkers is the first critical step to success in a new house.

I recapped my publishing history, all the while backhand-edly thumbing for something else interesting to sayâ??something that wouldnâ??t make it sound like my life was all about work. It was, and I liked it that way. If you love what you do, you donâ??t mind devoting yourself to it. But at times like this, I did wish I had something more colorful to share. Kids, house, a classy hobby like antique rose gardening or something. A childhood anecdote about where my love of stories began. Something having to do with bedtime tales and that one treasured book received as a birthday present.

It was nice to imagine, but it didnâ??t solve the problem. When your past is a locked box, introductions are . . . com-plicated.

I finally settled for a quick recounting of a wild trip to a mountaintop in Colorado to persuade Tom Brandon to sign his celebrity memoir deal with Stanislaus, during an auction between several publishing houses. It was one of the greatest coups of my career, but also the closest I had ever come to plummeting to my death.

â??You havenâ??t really lived until youâ??ve slid off a mountain on a snowmobile and spent twenty-four hours huddled against a blizzard,â? I added, knowing that my new coworkers would assume Iâ??d been desperately out of my element that night in the mountains, which couldnâ??t have been farther from the truth. After that experience, Tom Brandon knew things about me no one else in my adult life had ever known, but to his credit, he never revealed any of it during the interviews and hoopla surrounding the book. By mutual agreement, weâ??d kept one anotherâ??s secrets. Action hero Tom Brandon was a babe in the woods. And I was a backwoods girl in hiding.

â??The search and rescue made for great publicity for the project, though, even if that was one seriously bone-cold night in the woods,â? I finished, and my coworkers laughedâ??all ex-cept Roger. Iâ??d forgotten until now that he was working for a competitor during that bidding war. Iâ??d beaten him out.

He sidled close again as the meeting broke up. â??Iâ??ve never quite forgiven you for that Tom Brandon deal. That was sheer brilliance.â?

â??Oh, come on, Roger. You know itâ??s not often that I actu-ally win one of our little battles.â? It was the usual love-hate interplay. In a competitive business, colleagues tend to be like siblings who canâ??t stand one another half the time and play nice the other half.

Roger pulled me into a momentary shoulder hug. â??It all worked out. Losing that deal was what convinced me to pur-sue more fiction.â?

Quick little stab-stab there. Oh, that hurt. He knew Iâ??d al-ways had stories in my bloodâ??that fiction was my real dreamâ??but when youâ??re successful in one arena and youâ??ve got bills to pay, itâ??s hard to take a chance on foreign territory.

Roger caught me stealing a glance at the slush pile. â??Fas-cinating, isnâ??t it?â? His breath brushed across my ear, minty fresh. Too close for comfort.

â??Yes, it is.â?

â??Stay away from Slush Mountain. Itâ??s the old manâ??s mas-terpiece.â? A quick warning, and then he was gone.

I considered waiting around for a chance to casually tell the boss how thrilled I was to be here, but he and Hollis were enwrapped in conversation at the end of the table, so I gath-ered my things and started toward the door.

â??North Carolina,â? George Vida said just before I reached the exit. I stopped short, turned around.

The boss had paused to look at me, but Hollis was still sifting through papers, seeming slightly frustrated by the de-lay.

A thick, stubby, old-man finger crooked in my direction. â??Thatâ??s what I was hearing.â? He tapped the side of his face. â??Reporterâ??s ear. I can usually pick up accents. I remember now. Youâ??re a Clemson grad. It was somewhere in the pa-perwork, or Hollis may have mentioned it.â?

â??Must have been in the paperwork,â? Hollis contributed dryly.

The boss smiled at me, his round cheeks lifting into an ex-pression that reminded me of Vito Corleone in The Godfather. â??You North Carolina girls should find some time to catch up. There are no memories like those of the old home place.â? Still smiling, he returned to his paperwork, not noticing that nei-ther Hollis nor I jumped on the home place conversation.

Somehow, I had a feeling we wouldnâ??t be sitting down for a sweet-tea-and-magnolia chat anytime soon. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. In the beginning of the story, Jen feels as though she has finally achieved her dream, but the dream is about to take an unexpected turn. Have you ever stepped through an open door expecting one thing, then found something completely different?

2. Jen’s adult life is in many ways a facade, in that it involves denying and concealing her past. Do you ever feel the need to conceal parts of yourself in order to fit in or advance in a career or social situation? What price do we pay for such choices?

3. When Jen finds the Story Keeper manuscript, she is compelled to read it, even though she knows it’s both a personal and a professional risk. Why do you think she makes that choice? Describe a time when you were driven to take a risk personally or professionally. Did it pay off? What happened?

4. In Sarra’s day, women were given far fewer options in life. Are there stories in your own family of women who faced difficult circumstances and survived or triumphed? How did they overcome their trials?

5. Faced with either helping Sarra or preserving his own safety, Rand chooses to take the risk. In the moment of crisis, he steps forward, even while imagining how a bullet would feel. Do you think we all have the capacity to become heroes? Have you had a heroic moment in your own life? Or can you identify a situation in your past for which you now regret not stepping up?

6. Evan finds himself limited by the persona that has been created by his success. Have others’ expectations of you ever made you feel the need to “play a part”? How can we get real in front of the world?

7. In Helen Hall, Jen sees the “quiet festering of a dream” that was sacrificed in favor of family and business needs. Are there any dreams in your life that have been shelved by necessity? What would it take to go after those dreams? Will you be able to pursue them at some point in the future?

8. Evan Hall’s fans have taken literary love to the point of borderline mania. Have you ever been so enthusiastic about a book that you wanted to visit the setting, contact the author, or “live the book” in some way? What characteristics captivate you and draw you into a story?

9. Because life among the Brethren Saints caused religion and abuse to become hopelessly tangled in Jen’s mind, she has pushed faith aside. Have you dealt with “wounded believers” in your life or been one yourself? How can we separate what we’ve been told about God from authentic truth?

10. Sarra lives in a world that is limited by abuse and prejudice, yet she remains hopeful, determined, and faithful. Rather than blaming God, she looks to God. Where does this attitude come from? Do you think Rand’s faith is “softer” because he has not been tested?

11. Despite the difficult history between Jen and her sisters, the ties of sisterhood still bind and tug. Are the bonds of siblings always lifelong bonds? When those bonds are broken and tattered, what are the results? Have you ever wished a relationship could be different from what it was?

12. The mountains are a touchstone to Jen’s childhood. Where are the touchstones to your childhood? What do they mean to you?

Weblinks

»	Author's web site
»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Follow the author on Facebook

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 1 of 1 members.

Member Reviews

Rate this book