"Going Home"
Reviewed by Joanne Bozik
Posted October 5, 2014
Women's Fiction Time Slip | Inspirational
Jen Gibbs a successful editor in New York lands herself a
great job with a book publishing company. The aging owner
of the company still believes in keeping the "slush pile",
which is stacks and stacks of hand or type written
manuscripts collected through the years and he will
continue this manner for he still does not trust
computers.
No one is allowed to touch the "slush pile". But one day
when Jen sits at her deck, she notices pages from a
manuscript from the untouchable "slush pile". First she
panics, then calms herself, but she feels as though
someone put it there to get her into trouble for in this
business there are many a Brutus. As the day slowly
passes
by, her temptation pushes her to start reading the
manuscript. When reading the story of Sarra, a young woman
of mixed race in the Appalachian mountains, it brings back
sad memories for Jen, for she was born and raised there.
She remembers the tales she was told of the strange people
of mixed races who lived in parts of Appalachia.
Jen is happy with her new life in New York and her new
position at Vida House Publishing. She wants to leave her
terrible upbringing and family behind her and lock it away
in her head, but the owner of Vida House has other ideas.
He sends Jen on a journey to find the rest of the
manuscript, to find out if it's true or false, to find the
author alive or dead.
Jen is not happy about going home to
the Blue Ridge Mountains, and when she arrives she tries
to
keep her distance from her family. After doing some
research Jen believes she knows the name and location of
the author. In fact, he's a famous author of shape shifter
novel series and low and behold, Jen arrives just when the
tourists are all camped out paying homage to the author
and
his shape shifter series!
When Jen discovers that Evan Hall is the author of the
shape shifters series and gets little tidbits from others
who live in the area, especially Evan's aunt, Jen finds a
way to make contact with Evan who lives in a beautiful
mansion in the Blue Ridge Mountains by Mirror Lake. Many
of
his followers who have read the shape shifters series
believe there are portals that will take them through
time,
to the past, to the future as he had written in his
novels.
Surrounding his property are acres of land with high
fences
to keep out the weird followers, and that's another way
Jen
finds her way up to Evans house. Evan's aunt told Jen that
her nephew could be very rude and nasty. Well will Jen
find
out his good side or bad or both?
THE STORY KEEPER has to be the best book
read I've read in two years. It's heart warming, a story
within a story, love that blooms from within and without.
Characters are plenty, some funny some way too serious and
behind the times. As if time stands still for many in the
Blue Ridge Mountains. I say, "WHOAH" to Lisa Wingate
author of THE STORY KEEPER. A recommended read! What an
amazing read! THE STORY KEEPER is a definte keeper and reread.
SUMMARY
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.
ExcerptThis is the glory hour. This is the place the magic
happens.The thought fell quietly into place, like a photographer’s
backdrop unfurling behind the subject of a portrait. Its
shimmering folds caught my attention, bringing to mind a
bit of advice from Wilda Culp, the person without whom I
would’ve ended up somewhere completely different. Some-
place tragic. It’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. They’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
know-ing 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 meeting—my first at Vida House. This
meeting would be different from all other such gatherings
I’d attend-ed 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
survey paused momentarily on the pile of aging envelopes,
manuscript boxes, and rubber band–wrapped papers at the far
end of the conference room. The odd conglomeration, among
so many other things, was Vida House’s claim to fame—a
curiosity I’d only heard about until today. One of the few
remaining actual slush piles in all of New York City,
perhaps in all of publishing. In the age of e-mail
communica-tion, paper-and-print slush piles had quietly
gone the way of the dinosaurs. Digital slush is smaller,
easier to manage, more efficient. Invisible. It gathers no
dust, never achieves a patina like the slowly fading
fragments in George Vida’s relic. Behold . . . Slush Mountain, the young intern who’d taken
me on the new-employee tour had said, adding a grandiose
hand flourish. It’s practically a tourist attraction. He’d
leaned closer then. And FYI, don’t call it that in front of
the big boss. George Vida loves this thing. Nobody, but
nobody, touches it. Nobody asks why it’s still taking up
space in the conference area. We all just pretend it’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 al-most to the antique tin ceiling. From there,
the collection slowly fanned outward toward the base,
confining the con-ference table and chairs to the remaining
three-quarters of the room. The intern’s information wasn’t new. George Vida (I’d
noticed 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 didn’t mind their p’s and q’s in terms of
submission guidelines, and two, that success in publishing
is about leaving no page unturned and no envelope unopened.
Slush Mountain stood as a reminder that publishing is a
labor of love, emphasis on labor. It’s no small struggle to
climb to a level where you might discover the next great
American bestseller . . . and actually get credit for it
when you do. “Is it everything you imagined?” Roger leaned in from the
next chair, surreptitiously indicating Slush Mountain.
Roger and I had been coworkers ten years ago, starting out
at a publishing 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
Miner’s Daughter than a New Yorker in the making. I nodded but focused on George Vida. I wasn’t about to be
lured into talking in pub board meeting on my very first
day . . . or ogling Slush Mountain. I’d never been quite
sure whether Roger was a friend or the competition. Maybe
that was just me being jealous. I’d been pigeonholed in
nonfic-tion and memoir for years, while Roger had managed
to float from acquiring nonfiction to fiction, and back
again, seem-ingly 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 you’ve left
the place and the people behind. I turned the sound off under the table. “Sorry. I usually
leave it in my office during meetings, but I haven’t
unpacked yet.” The excuse felt woefully inadequate.
Doubtless, George Vida’s cell phone had never busted a
meeting. A sudden shuffling, rustling, and muffled groaning cir-cled
the table, everyone seeming to prepare for something. A
horrifying thought raced past. What if cell phones in a
meeting are a firing offense? Silly, no doubt, but I’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. “Box.” George Vida pointed to the upturned lid of a
printer-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 gently 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.
They’ll never forget you now. On the upside, they’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 wasn’t looking. He grinned ruefully, giving me
what was probably a twenty-two-year-old’s idea of a flirta-
tious wink. I sneered back at him in a way that hopefully said, Forget
it, buddy. You’re just a baby, and aside from that, I won’t
date anybody I work with. Ever. Again. The meeting got started then. The usual power play went on—
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
another’s pro-jects, their alliances showing. The sales and
marketing gurus leaned forward for some pitches, reclined
in their chairs during 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 hadn’t gotten that far yet, but I would. As
quickly as possible. Once the day wound down and the
building cleared out this even-ing, 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, I’d be functional. Mostly. In next
Monday’s pub board meeting, I could begin to contribute, a
little at a time. Carefully. George Vida did not appreciate
braggado-cio—I’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. “Hollis, if you will introduce us to the newest member of
the Vida House family, we’ll adjourn this meeting,” he re-
quested, and suddenly I was the center of attention again. George Vida’s secretary, Hollis—picture Jane Hathaway from
The Beverly Hillbillies, but a couple decades old-er—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. I’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. Hollis’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 she’d looked over the folder
of contracts and paperwork I’d signed. Her gaze swept the room. “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
recipient of the Aberdeen Fellowship of Arts and Letters
and the Steinbeck Fellowship. We are pleased to welcome her
to the team.” Her regard settled on me, though she looked
nei-ther pleased nor unhappy. “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.” “Thank you.” I did a split-second mental debate on whether
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 back-
handedly thumbing for something else interesting to say—
something that wouldn’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 don’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
garden-ing 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 pre-sent. It was nice to imagine, but it didn’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. “You haven’t really lived until you’ve slid off a mountain
on a snowmobile and spent twenty-four hours huddled against
a blizzard,” I added, knowing that my new coworkers would
assume I’d been desperately out of my element that night in
the mountains, which couldn’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 inter-views
and hoopla surrounding the book. By mutual agree-ment, we’d
kept one another’s secrets. Action hero Tom Brandon was a
babe in the woods. And I was a backwoods girl in hiding. “The search and rescue made for great publicity for the
project, though, even if that was one seriously bone-cold
night in the woods,” I finished, and my coworkers laughed—
all except Roger. I’d forgotten until now that he was
working for a competitor during that bidding war. I’d
beaten him out. He sidled close again as the meeting broke up. “I’ve never
quite forgiven you for that Tom Brandon deal. That was
sheer brilliance.” “Oh, come on, Roger. You know it’s not often that I ac-
tually win one of our little battles.” It was the usual
love-hate interplay. In a competitive business, colleagues
tend to be like siblings who can’t stand one another half
the time and play nice the other half. Roger pulled me into a momentary shoulder hug. “It all
worked out. Losing that deal was what convinced me to pur-
sue more fiction.” Quick little stab-stab there. Oh, that hurt. He knew I’d
always had stories in my blood—that fiction was my real
dream—but when you’re successful in one arena and you’ve
got bills to pay, it’s hard to take a chance on foreign
territory. Roger caught me stealing a glance at the slush pile. “Fas-
cinating, isn’t it?” His breath brushed across my ear,
minty fresh. Too close for comfort. “Yes, it is.” “Stay away from Slush Mountain. It’s the old man’s mas-
terpiece.” 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. “North Carolina,” 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.
“That’s what I was hearing.” He tapped the side of his
face. “Reporter’s ear. I can usually pick up accents. I
remember now. You’re a Clemson grad. It was somewhere in
the pa-perwork, or Hollis may have mentioned it.” “Must have been in the paperwork,” Hollis contributed
dryly. The boss smiled at me, his round cheeks lifting into an
expression that reminded me of Vito Corleone in The God-
father. “You North Carolina girls should find some time to
catch up. There are no memories like those of the old home
place.” Still smiling, he returned to his paperwork, not
notic-ing that neither Hollis nor I jumped on the home
place con-versation. Somehow, I had a feeling we wouldn’t be sitting down for a
sweet-tea-and-magnolia chat anytime soon.
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