Monday, February 28, 2011

"The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady"

Elizabeth Stuckey-French is the author of a novel, Mermaids on the Moon, a collection of short stories, The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa, and, with Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction: A Guide to the Narrative Craft.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, and reported the following:
I’d always heard that page 100 was the test!

Here’s a synopsis of my novel:

Seventy-seven year old Marylou Ahearn is going to kill Dr. Wilson Spriggs come hell or high water. In 1953, he gave her a radioactive cocktail without her consent as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences. Marylou has been plotting her revenge for fifty years when she accidentally discovers his whereabouts in Florida and her plans finally snap into action. She high-tails it to hot and humid Tallahassee, moves in down the block from where a now senile Spriggs lives with his daughter’s family, and begins the tricky work of insinuating herself into their lives. But she has no idea what a nest of yellow jackets she is stumbling into. Before the novel is through, someone will be kidnapped, an unlikely couple will get engaged, someone will nearly die from eating a pineapple upside-down cake laced with anti-freeze, and that’s not all…

Page 69 of The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady will introduce you to some of the yellow jackets Marylou encounters-- Dr. Sprigg’s daughter Caroline and her eldest daughter Ava, who, on page 69, are having another fight. Caroline is also thinking about her husband Vic and how unhelpful he’s been in dealing with Ava’s Asperger’s syndrome.

But the point of view shifts in the novel, and all the family members get their own chapters. Page 69 just happens to be in one of Caroline’s chapters, so you are getting her perspective, which is crucial, but also crucial are the perspectives of Marylou and Vic and Ava and her siblings Otis and Suzi and Dr. Wilson Spriggs. You really must read the whole book!
Learn more about the book and author at Elizabeth Stuckey-French's website.

Visit the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue