"The Kindness of Strangers"

Emma Garman, a Brighton-based writer and critic, has been a columnist for The Paris Review and a contributor to Literary Review, The Daily Beast, Lapham’s Quarterly, and History News Network. She has an MA in creative writing from the City College of New York and an MA in literature from Queen Mary University of London.

Garman applied the Page 69 Test to The Kindness of Strangers, her debut novel, and reported the following:

Four of the six residents of 42 Tregunter Road—Mina, Honor, Robbie, and Saul—are gathered for breakfast in the kitchen. 17-year-old Mina has slept in her hair rollers (“One must suffer to be beautiful”), and muses about getting a perm. The others, uninterested in Mina’s hair, are preoccupied with the two housemates not present, Georgina and Jimmy. Honor tries to divert the conversation onto George’s whereabouts, only for Saul to redirect it towards Robbie’s opinion of recent arrival Jimmy.

On page 69, then, very little actually happens—and yet the book’s mood and themes are illustrated quite effectively. The murder mystery plot is driven by secrets and masquerades of various kinds, and here we have interactions that, while mundane on the surface, expose private tensions and dissimulations to the reader.

In asking Mina about George, Honor half-yawns “with apparent disinterest.” As Mina begins to answer, Saul puts a hand on her wrist—a peremptory gesture—because he wants to talk about Jimmy. Yet Robbie is reluctant to do so, as signaled by his fidgeting with breadcrumbs on the tabletop.

We also get a representative glimpse at the characters’ personalities: Mina is confident and a bit self-absorbed; Honor is controlled, steely, and scheming; Saul is charming and persuasive; Robbie is nervy and unassertive. We get a tiny sense of George, who’s still in bed—her favorite place! Even Jimmy’s absence is significant, because (not a spoiler), he’ll soon be dead.

The British location is obvious from the mention of a teapot and marmalade. However, the test does fail in one important way: a reader wouldn’t guess the era from reading page 69 alone (although Mina’s use of the dated term “permanent wave” suggests a historical setting). We’re in 1953, when homosexuality and abortion were illegal under English law and murder was still punishable by death—all social realities that mold these characters’ fates and, in combination, lead to the disaster depicted in the prologue: Jimmy bleeding out on the living room floor, with no one trying save his life.

Visit Emma Garman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Enormous Wings"

Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of six novels. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Publishers Weekly, People Magazine, Lit Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald, and other publications. She is the recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. Her novels have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and been optioned for film and TV. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Washington where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

Frankel applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Enormous Wings, and shared the following:

This prompt is my favorite because it’s always so uncannily, hard-to-believe accurate. For every book I’ve written (now six!), page 69 never fails to be a perfect microcosm of the whole. And the Page 69 Test — and the fact that it works so well — never fails to blow my mind.

Enormous Wings is the story of Pepper Mills, a seventy-seven-year-old grandmother who moves into a retirement community, falls in love, and then falls ill, but when she goes to the doctor, she finds out she’s not sick; she’s pregnant. She comes home from that doctor’s appointment and, on page 69, tells Moth, her seventy-nine-year-old boyfriend, the news. At first, naturally, he thinks she’s joking. Smack dab in the middle of the page, he says, laughing, “Old age and pregnancy share a lot of the same symptoms, now I think about it.” This single sentence could be this book’s tagline and is for sure the seed of it, its central metaphor, and the point it explores for its other 284 pages.

Also on page 69, we get Pepper’s frustrations with the limitations of the health care system, her lack of options and agency on any number of fronts, her sweet relationship with Moth. We get the very present threat Pepper and Moth both live with, as people in winter of their years, that a simple moment of confusion could in fact be a stroke or the first signs of dementia, that exhaustion could just be feeling tired but might be early symptoms of something much worse, that even getting up off the bed and crossing the room saps more energy than they always have to spare. All of the above is exactly why I chose this admittedly strange premise and why I thought a pregnant seventy-seven-year-old was the perfect character to explore issues of agency, bodily autonomy, reproductive rights, family, health care, elder care, and love love love.

Visit Laurie Frankel's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Laurie Frankel and Calli.

The Page 69 Test: The Atlas of Love.

My Book, The Movie: Goodbye for Now.

The Page 69 Test: Goodbye for Now.

My Book, The Movie: This Is How It Always Is.

The Page 69 Test: This Is How It Always Is.

Writers Read: Laurie Frankel (February 2017).

The Page 69 Test: One Two Three.

Q&A with Laurie Frankel.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Delivery"

Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a son of the Finger Lakes, a Kenyon College graduate, and now a longtime Ohio resident, is the author of more than a dozen crime novels and multiple short stories.

Welsh-Huggins’s new book in the Mercury Carter thriller series, The Delivery, was selected by CrimeReads as one of the most anticipated thrillers, mysteries, and crime novels of 2026, while the first book in the series, The Mailman, was named one of the best mysteries of 2025 by Library Journal.

Welsh-Huggins's 2023 stand-alone crime novel, The End of the Road, was named one of the best thrillers of the first half of 2023 by Library Journal. Kirkus called it “A crackerjack crime yarn chockablock with miscreants and a supersonic pace.”

Welsh-Huggins is also the author of the Shamus Award-nominated Andy Hayes private eye series featuring a former Ohio State and Cleveland Browns quarterback turned private eye, including the most recent book, Sick to Death, which Deadly Pleasures Magazine called, " … a solid p.i. novel with likeable characters, realistic situations and good detection."

The author applied the Page 69 Test to The Delivery with the following results:

Page 69 of The Delivery is told from the point of view of Randy Carmichael, a Providence, Rhode Island, grifter, who is obsessing as he often does about the cost of long-term care needed by his daughter, Michelle, who was left permanently disabled by a swimming pool accident as a child. Randy has cooked up a healthcare fraud con with his wife, fellow criminal Monica Carmichael, and he needs every penny from the scheme for the medical assistance required by Michelle. The page also introduces a major thorn in Randy’s side, a mafia wannabe named Pauley Carnivale, who has inadvertently stumbled upon Randy and Monica’s grift and is demanding a piece of the action.

In this case, page 69 sets the reader in medias res and doesn’t connect directly with the book’s main plot, which finds freelance mailman Mercury Carter searching for a missing trafficked woman so he can return a ruby ring she lost in a previous misadventure. At this point in the book, Carter hasn’t met Randy and Monica yet, although their paths will soon cross in violent fashion.

Carter, a freelance mailman who has never missed a delivery, is bound by his personal code of honor to find the trafficked woman—Terri Watkins—and return her ring, regardless of who gets in his way. As often happens with Carter’s deliveries, an unexpected obstacle launches the action. In the case of The Delivery, Carter is in town to drop off a valuable item of baseball memorabilia to an ardent fan when Carter stops to rescue a woman injured in a car crash. As a result of the rescue, he finds himself sidetracked by the new assignment delivering the ring, a job that comes with deadly consequences.

Visit Andrew Welsh-Huggins's website.

My Book, The Movie: An Empty Grave.

Q&A with Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

The Page 69 Test: An Empty Grave.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (April 2023).

My Book, The Movie: The End of the Road.

The Page 69 Test: The End of the Road.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (November 2024).

My Book, The Movie: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: Sick to Death.

The Page 69 Test: The Mailman.

Writers Read: Andrew Welsh-Huggins (March 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Republic of Memory"

Mahmud El Sayed is a British Egyptian science fiction and fantasy writer and translator. A former journalist, he won the 2023 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Color for his work focusing on Arabic and Islamic–inspired themes in a genre he is calling Arabfuturism. He lives in East London where he spends his time pondering linguistic oddities and running story ideas by his cat.

El Sayed applied the Page 69 Test to The Republic of Memory, his debut novel, and reported the following:

Page 69 comes in the middle of Chapter 5 which is the third chapter from the POV of Translator Iskander Ezz – a low-ranking bureaucrat on the city-ship Safina. This is a generation ship divided not according to race or religion, but language, with translators serving as something akin to lawyers. On page 69, Iskander is heading down to Stasis – where all the ancestors are asleep in cryo-stasis – to try and convince his cousin Lebanon, who works in Stasis watch, to help him with a favour. However, before he can even get on deck, he must blag his way past the ever-present Security.

“It’ll take five minutes, I promise.”

Vic blew out a breath. “Fine, but you owe me one.”

Iskander nodded and moved past the big Security officer – but not before jotting down a quick note in the secret ledger of his tab: Corporal Victory Kamunda. One favor owed for letting me into Stasis against standing orders.

I think page 69 is a pretty good introduction to TROM as a whole. It’s from one of the book’s main POV characters and catches him doing one of the main POV character things that he does, namely facilitating and negotiating between the various factions on the ship. Page 69 gives readers a nice, clean, snap-shot of who Iskander is and, just as importantly, what the ship he lives on is like. Yes, there’s Security barring his way but he knows how to circumvent them.

I would conclude that the test works with TROM but only partially. The strength of multi-POV (and my book is very multi-POV with 12 POV characters) is that it allows writers to tell multiple disparate stories, and even genres, at the same time. Polyphonic storytelling. Iskander’s chapters might give readers the sense of a low-key slice-of-life story set on a generation ship. But if page 69 had fallen on a different chapter, they might just as easily think they were reading a sci-fi detective novel, a revolutionary bildungsroman, even experimental literary fiction based on a constructed language. Multi-POV is never just one thing.

Follow Mahmud El Sayed on Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Dead Room"

Catriona McPherson (she/her) was born in Scotland and immigrated to the US in 2010. A former linguistics professor, she is now a full-time fiction writer and has published: preposterous 1930s private-detective stories; realistic 1940s amateur-sleuth stories (The Edinburgh Murders is latest); and contemporary psychothriller standalones (The Dead Room is the brand-new one). These are all set in Scotland with a lot of Scottish weather. She also writes modern comic crime capers about a Scot-out-of- water in a “fictional” college town in Northern California sneezedavissneeze. Scot’s Eggs, No. 8 just won for best humorous novel at Left Coast Crime in San Francisco. Her other novels have won Agathas, Anthonys, Leftys and Macavitys and been finalists for an Edgar, a CWA Dagger and three Mary Higgins Clark awards.

McPherson is a proud lifetime member and former national president of Sisters in Crime.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Dead Room, and shared the following:

From page 69:

‘Lord’s Yard,’ he says. ‘You’re sniffing round for a house clearance.’ I open my mouth to tell him that the house is clear, but he sails on. ‘We work pretty hard to stop funeral directors, furniture dealers, e-scooter reps or anyone else from bugging our friends. Take a hike.’

I find myself smiling. I’ve had the sharp end of it but it’s still good to know how well-protected these people are.

‘I will go,’ I say. ‘ I mean, you’re wrong about me but I can’t prove it so . . . I’ll try something else.’

‘You do that,’ he says, turning away. He’s back in the office before I’m out of the front door and whoever it is who’s lurking in there says something I don’t quite catch. It sounds like “Now shave,’ but even if that was his wife, it surely can’t be.

Page sixty-nine of The Dead Room happens to be the end of a chapter so it’s short. I’ve stuck with it nevertheless because, as Monica says in an episode of Friends, “Rules control the fun!” Also, it’s a good excerpt for its size in the terms of this game.

First off, Lord’s Yard is the scrapyard full of old furniture, house clearances, overstock and assorted other junk where Lindsay, the narrator grew up. It’s central to the story. And in this passage, Lindsay is searching for a lost old lady – another core aspect of the book – by asking around local nursing homes. In this one, she’s getting short shrift from a manager who assumes she’s preying on vulnerable elders to make money selling them stuff.

Lindsay’s response to being suspected is revealing of her personality. She’s pleased to find out that the guy in charge of this nursing home won’t let his residents be sold any bridges. It’s always seemed to me to be a mark of someone’s character whether they can understand that they’re not owed trust in the absence of evidence and that, if they take themselves off centre- stage, the world’s a better place because whoever is standing up to them is standing up to them.

You see it when parents are investigated for child abuse if a little one suffers a suspicious injury. I’m always really impressed with parents who get that the system protects tiny people and are grateful that it’s currently protecting their tiny people, rather than protecting the adults’ feelings and image. Moving on, finally there’s what Lindsay overhears as she’s leaving to try the next place. “Now shave.” Now shave? Campaigned-for-the-American-Readers, that – drumroll – is a clue.

All in all, a pretty neat little package of promises regarding what you’ll find in The Dead Room, eh?

Visit Catriona McPherson's website.

The Page 69 Test: Go to My Grave.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2018).

My Book, The Movie: The Turning Tide.

The Page 69 Test: The Turning Tide.

My Book, The Movie: A Gingerbread House.

The Page 69 Test: Hop Scot.

The Page 69 Test: Deep Beneath Us.

Q&A with Catriona McPherson.

The Page 69 Test: The Witching Hour.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (September 2024).

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (December 2024).

The Page 69 Test: Scotzilla.

My Book, The Movie: Scotzilla.

The Page 69 Test: Scot's Eggs.

Writers Read: Catriona McPherson (November 2025).

--Marshal Zeringue

"Ways to Find Yourself"

Angela Brown is the author of Some Other Time and Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time. In addition to her novels, Brown’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, Real Simple, and other publications. She holds an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Brown lives in New Jersey with her husband and two children.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Ways to Find Yourself, with the following results:

In Ways to Find Yourself, page 69 falls in the middle of a chapter. The protagonist, Grace, has recently arrived back at the beach house where she once stayed with her mother every summer, and is on a phone call with her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Adam. During the call, Adam reflects on the idea of “signs” (ex: seeing a coin on the sidewalk, finding a ladybug on your hand, spotting a red cardinal at the window). Although Adam has never much believed in “signs,” Grace has followed them all her life; in no small way, the whole reason she’s back at the beach house is because of a “sign” she saw one day earlier. Through the conversation, it’s clear Adam is second-guessing their split and using “signs” as a way to express his hesitation. About midway through the page, their call pivots to a brief flashback from an early (and bittersweet) moment in their relationship when their future together still felt full of promise.

Although page 69 doesn’t provide a big reveal (which comes a few pages later), it does highlight important details about the story. First, it sets up an event that comes at the midway point, one that ultimately pushes the rest of the plot forward. I’d argue that without this scene, that later twist probably wouldn’t have the architecture in place to logically exist. Likewise, the specific conversation between Grace and Adam is significant not only to this moment, but to the book as a whole. Since losing her mother, Birdie, the practice of looking for signs has become even more meaningful to Grace—she’s lost, searching for a new path, and hoping Birdie will send her guidance about how to move forward. On this page, Adam—who has never much believed in the practice but mostly humored Grace about her beliefs—is suddenly interested in the idea. Without him ever saying so directly, it shows he’s had a change-of-heart and is second-guessing their split. All in all, this page captures several themes central to the book—a feeling of regret about things not working out the way you’ve planned, and an uncertainty about how to take the next step.

Visit Angela Brown's website.

The Page 69 Test: Olivia Strauss Is Running Out of Time.

Q&A with Angela Brown.

The Page 69 Test: Some Other Time.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Drop Dead Famous"

Jennifer Pearson is a former teacher and author who lives in the northeast of England with two energetic boys and her somewhat energetic husband. She’s the author of several middle grade novels, writing as Jenny Pearson, and has been short-listed for the Costa Children’s Book Award and the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, and was the winner of the Lollies (Laugh Out Loud Book Awards). When she’s not writing, Pearson can either be found doing something sporty or binge-watching true crime documentaries while eating astounding quantities of cheese.

Pearson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Drop Dead Famous, and reported the following:

In Drop Dead Famous, global superstar Blair Baker rises above the stage for the opening number of her hometown concert. The cheers quickly transform into screams when the crowd realises Blair has been shot. On page 69, we find her sister, Stevie scrolling through video footage from the concert, searching for clues as to who the killer could be.

She brought her eyes to the screen. Finger steady this time, she hit Play. And she focused on the details. The faces in the crowd. The people on the stage—behind the stage. Security and merchandise vendors. She zoomed in on every shot, trying to look past heads that were blocking her view. She relived it all. Frame by frame. Blair’s entrance. The missed cues. Bex Lyons running onto the stage. The screams. The panic. The announcement. That para medic. Again and again, angle after angle. But there was nothing she hadn’t seen herself in the flesh. Doubt crept in. Then anger. What was she hoping to find? Some guy tiptoeing out with a gun in his hand and an I Murdered Blair Baker T-shirt? But she kept scrolling. And scrolling. Reel after reel replaying her sister’s murder. Her desperation growing, her mind slipping—letting go of the details, leaving a path for her pain. Blair was dead. Her sister was dead. It tore through her—carved her open. She dropped her eyes from the screen. Sobs racked her body, shook her from the inside out. She gave in to it—cried violently and uncontrollably.

The Page 69 Test works because it shows that the book deals with grief and mystery and portrays Stevie’s desperate need to find answers about her sister’s death as she obsessively replays the footage and spirals into an emotional breakdown. So, it does a solid job of showing the novel’s darker side and the main character’s motivation.

However, Drop Dead Famous is not a relentlessly depressing book, and this passage doesn’t have much of the humour that appears elsewhere. Maybe this is because it only shows one character. We don’t meet Colby Green (and her cowboy boots), who is the Blair Baker superfan who helps Stevie investigate and much to Steie’s surprise becomes her best friend.

So, while the page effectively represents the emotional intensity and mystery of the book, it does not capture its full range of themes and character dynamics.

Visit Jenny Pearson's website.

My Book, The Movie: Drop Dead Famous.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Fair Chase"

Travis Mulhauser was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His novel, The Trouble Up North, was one of NPR's Books We Love in 2025, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, was an Amazon Editor's Choice Pick, and an Apple Audio Must Listen selection. His novel, Sweetgirl was long-listed for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, was a Michigan Notable Book Award winner, an Indie Next Pick, and was named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year.

Mulhauser is the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories, and received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro. He is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, two children, and dog.

Mulhauser applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Fair Chase, and shared the following:

Fair Chase passes the Page 69 Test!

Page 69 is the opening of a chapter in which most of the novel’s main characters are present, and discussing the wolf that is the centerpiece of the story.

A gray wolf, an endangered species, has arrived in northern Michigan for the first time in over a century, and the Sawbrook family has assigned itself to protect the animal from a scared community.

Cutler County faces a construction stoppage and real economoic hardship if the federal laws designed to protect endangered species are engaged, and nobody, including the politicians and state government agencies, want that to happen. The Sawbrooks view protecting the wolf as both the right thing to do, the best way to stop the development projects that continue to threaten their property and way of life. Even if it means taking on some poachers.

The page also provides an opportunity for Lucy, a park ranger, to helpfully explain that the wolf is an alpha, not because it asserts thoughtless dominance, but because it’s a leader who would be trusted to make decisions on the pack’s behalf because of its intelligence, toughness, and empathy.

Visit Travis Mulhauser's website.

Q&A with Travis Mulhauser.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Quarter Queen"

Kayla Hardy is a mythology expert and multi-hyphenate author and screenwriter of Louisiana Creole descent. She earned her PhD in creative writing and African American literature from SUNY Binghamton University. Hardy is an adjunct professor at SUNY Binghamton University and is an accomplished scholar of Black folklore, mythology, and Voodoo.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Quarter Queen, her first novel, with the following results:

Page 69 of The Quarter Queen takes place right after Marie has saved Ree from a snatcher attack, showing just how far she will go to save her daughter from any threat, even if it includes breaking rules she helps keep in place:

“Not another word.”

“Oh, I think one more will do just fine. It’s your turn to explain yourself—why did you meet with Silas? What is your relationship to the Grand Wizard of the Brotherhood?” Ree was going to be fair about it. She was going to offer her the chance to come clean, to do away with all of her secrets and plots.

A flash of glittering anger in Marie’s eyes. But still she said nothing.

“Silence still makes you a liar, Marie. But since you are so quiet, perhaps I should tell you that I overheard you with Father Antoine, discussing the Harbinger and the Inquisition. And . . .” She hesitated, then said the name anyway: “Jon.”

“Enough!” her mother commanded, vibrant anger radiating from her. The fire flared, smoke filling their small parlor, backlighting her mother in the hearth’s orange-gold light, her face twisted first with sorrow, then with fury.

No, it was not Ree’s mother staring at her. It was the Quarter Queen, her bone-white eyes, the tignon upon her head coming undone, transfiguring itself into her golden fleur-de-lis crown, her long curls floating about her cheeks like seaweed swaying in black water.

“I am your queen,” she spat. “It’s high time you acknowledged that.”

“You are my mother! It’s high time you acknowledged that.”

And there it was. The real trouble between them.

When her mother spoke again, her voice had grown unusually soft, carrying an unmistakable bitter note. “The ways in which I have failed you as a mother are but small sacrifices to the ways in which I have succeeded as Queen of the Quarter. One day you will understand, when you have taken my place.”

As it happens, page 69 of The Quarter Queen is a spookily accurate example of illustrating the emotional dynamic between Marie and her daughter, Ree. They are arguing after Marie has just saved Ree’s life, and thereby showing Marie just how far her mother will go to keep her safe, even to a suffocating degree. But Marie is also a woman of contradictions as Ree rightfully points out—secretive as hell, formidable, and unwilling to bend to anyone’s will but her own. Still shaken from her near encounter with having her freedom ripped away by snatchers (not unlike bounty hunters employed in the real life Antebellum south who retrieved runaway slaves and freedman alike) Ree can’t help but reckon with her own privilege and just how much Marie’s secrecy has contributed to the comforts of her life. It must be a daunting task to be a subject in the fearsome’s Quarter Queen’s court and it must a different beast altogether to be her daughter and sole heir. Ree wrestles within the impossibility of inheriting a legacy she doesn’t even want, let alone one she fears she has no hope of successfully living up to. For Ree she must accept that to live within Marie Laveau’s shadow is to stifle one’s own light.

While The Quarter Queen is a historical novel (an alternate history to be exact), it is also a proper fantasy set within a magically reimagined New Orleans where witches, demons, gods, and spirits walk about freely. I like to think of it as a heightened version of the real New Orleans where the speculative elements are amplified to terrifying degrees. In this world, the city’s magical population known as Les Magiques can be enslaved or freed whose magical prowess is very much a sought-after commodity within the system of slavery. Every character in this novel, including Marie Laveau, are seeking to maintain their fragile sense of freedom and magic within a world hellbent on taking it. It is very much akin to the morally gray world dynamics of books like The Witcher or Game of Thrones.

Visit Kayla Hardy's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Unforgettable Mailman"

With a background in magazine publishing, April Howells has built a career in global communications and employer branding. Raised in southern Ontario, she now resides on the west coast of Canada with her husband and a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog named Chief.

Howells applied the Page 69 Test to The Unforgettable Mailman, her debut novel, and reported the following:

On page 69 of The Unforgettable Mailman, readers find Henry having a phone conversation with his friend about the security guard who’s determined to find him. It hints at the urgency of his mission and the postal forces that stand in his way.

“Didn’t think the big guy had it in him.”

Stan chuckled, and Henry’s chin lifted ever so slightly. “Me neither,” Stan said. “Though if I were you, I wouldn’t hang around too long to figure out what else he’s capable of.”

Henry stared at the overflowing bags as he wished Stan a good night. If he wanted to finish what he started, he’d need to move quickly.

The page also includes one of my favourite letters from the novel, from a woman who has spilled spaghetti sauce on her friend’s wedding dress and is desperate for help to remove the stain.

I’d say page 69 is a great example of what readers can expect from the story. Each time Henry delivers a letter to its rightful owner, the following chapter shows what it says. I loved writing the epistles, imagining what people would write to one another in 1966. Some letters are uplifting, some are mundane, some are heartbreaking. They’re a nostalgic reminder of how important human connection is.

In The Unforgettable Mailman, the Page 69 Test is a success!

Visit April Howells's website.

Q&A with April Howells.

My Book, The Movie: The Unforgettable Mailman.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Soldier's House"

Helen Benedict, a British-American professor of journalism at Columbia University, is the author of nine novels, six books of nonfiction, and a play.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Soldier's House, and shared the following:

The story in The Soldier's House is told in three alternating voices: that of Naema, an Iraqi widow and refugee; that of Jimmy, an American Iraq War veteran, and that of a third person narrator. Page 69 is in Jimmy's voice, and takes place in a grungy small town bar, where he's having drinks with his younger brothers, Pat and Rory, whom he more or less raised himself. The page doesn't touch on the main dynamic of the novel -- the tension between Naema and Jimmy -- but it does get across the tensions between Jimmy and his brothers, who don't really understand either his experiences in war, or why he's taken his Iraq interpreter's family into their family home.

Rory, Jimmy's youngest brother, has just learned the Naema's son has lost a leg.

“Wow, poor kid,” Rory says. “How old is he again?” Rory has a soft spot for kids.

“Five. Six next month.”

“Bet he gets bullied like hell at school. How’d he lose it? Was he born like that, or what?”

“They were in a war, powderhead,” Pat tells him.

“Fuck, you’re in a bad mood, Pat. Why don’t you chill the hell out?”

“It was a VBED,” I answer, ignoring them both.

“Speak English, for crap’s sake,” Rory snaps.

“Means a bomb in a car. We think the fuckwads who did it—”

“Jimmy, you don’t have to—” Pat begins.

I hold up my hand. “No, Rory should hear this.”

“Don’t want to. Hate your gory war stories. Just tell me about the kid.”

"I am."

I do think this page touches on a central aspect of Jimmy's personality, because he is a good man whose efforts to do right never seem to go the way he wants. He wants to rescue his interpreter's wife, only to find out she resents being rescued by her enemy. He wants to do right by his brothers, who only grow angry at him for acting like their dad. He wants a happy marriage with his wife, who inexplicably runs away. This gets to the essence of the novel: the question of whether forgiveness, whether between enemies or even within families, is ever possible in the wake of an unjust war.

Visit Helen Benedict's website.

My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season.

Q&A with Helen Benedict.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Deed.

My Book, The Movie: The Soldier's House.

Writers Read: Helen Benedict.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Concert Black"

Michael O’Donnell is the author of the bestselling novel Above the Fire and the new novel Concert Black. In 2023, Apple Books named him a debut writer to watch. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and many other publications. A longtime member of the National Book Critics Circle, he practiced law in government and the private sector for over twenty years after clerking for a federal judge. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and his law degree from Boston College. O’Donnell lives with his family in the Chicago area.

He applied the Page 69 Test to Concert Black with the following results:

Page 69 of Concert Black has only six lines—it ends a chapter—but it is a perfect fit for the Page 69 Test. The protagonist, Cecil Woodbridge, is just concluding a meeting with his attorney, Rene Hutchins. They are plotting strategy as Woodbridge tries to frustrate the author who wishes to write his biography. He has proved cagey with his attorney about why he doesn’t want it written, and a few pages earlier she finally gets him to say, “Half a century ago I did something rash and unseemly…. I took advantage of an opportunity. In a way that would not reflect well on my character, were it to come out now.”

On page 69, their meeting wraps up. Woodbridge has dictated their course of action, and Hutchins promises to carry out his instructions. But she makes one final attempt to understand the stakes of stopping the book. What will happen, she asks him, if his secret comes out? “I’ll be ruined,” he replies.

In a sense, this exchange is the fulcrum of the book. The reader has spent the first 68 pages wondering why Cecil Woodbridge fights off his biographer. After all, most celebrities would view having their biography written as entry into a sort of club: it makes them newsworthy and raises their profile. And the reader spends the remaining 182 pages learning what the secret is, why it matters—and whether Woodbridge can succeed in keeping it hidden.

Visit Michael O'Donnell's website.

Q&A with Michael O'Donnell.

The Page 69 Test: Above the Fire.

Writers Read: Michael O'Donnell (December 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue