"Two If By Sea"

Jacquelyn Mitchard is the number one New York Times bestselling author of twelve novels for adults, including The Deep End of the Ocean, which was the inaugural selection of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club and also made into a major feature film.

Mitchard applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Two If by Sea, and reported the following:

I really didn’t want to put Two if By Sea to the “page 69” test because, in any book that’s halfway worth its salt, page 69 is neither here nor there. It’s not part of the big beginning. It’s not anywhere near the first big reveal. It’s not the big anything, in fact, it’s the beginning of the mushy middle. (For the record, Two if By Sea does not have any mushy in it at all!) So I was surprised that page 69 was a really, really good page in terms of advancing this story. It’s the first place in the novel at which the incredible nature of what the little boy Ian can do – the “Ian effect,” if you will. It’s a very dramatic section, and it really put me to the test as a writer to see if I could create magical realism in a way that was more realism than magic. You’ll have to judge, but I think it did it!

Visit Jacquelyn Mitchard's website.

My Book, the Movie: Two If by Sea.

Writers Read: Jacquelyn Mitchard.

--Marshal Zeringue