"Goliath"

Susan Woodring grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her publications include a first novel, The Traveling Disease, and Springtime On Mars: Stories. She has been published in Passages North and a variety of other literary publications. She won the 2006 Isotope Editor's Prize, has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and was a notable mention in Best American Short Stories 2010.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Goliath, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Goliath, Marty and Janice Pickard are having yet another marital spat. This time, Marty has positioned himself on the roof and is threatening to jump if Janice continues with her plan to leave him. I think this scene is representational of the book even though Marty and Janice are not main characters and even though the event is not hugely consequential to the lives of the main characters or of the town. Yet, it does show an aspect of small town life that I think is really central to the book: there's a crowd milling about in the street, watching. In small towns like Goliath, private arguments often become town spectacles. Also, there's something about Marty's misguided but heartfelt attempt to avoid a painful end--in this case, it's the end of his marriage he's trying to avoid. In the scope of the book, it's the entire town, led by Rosamond Rogers, the book's main character, trying to save the factory and therefore save the town through their own somewhat misguided, heartfelt attempts.

Learn more about the book and author at Susan Woodring's website.

--Marshal Zeringue