Friday, October 25, 2019

"Everything You Are"

Kerry Anne King is the author of the international bestselling novels Closer Home, I Wish You Happy, and Whisper Me This.

King applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Everything You Are, and reported the following:
I was amazed and delighted to discover how perfectly the page 69 test holds up in Everything You Are.

Braden Healey, once a world-class cellist, spiraled into alcoholism and despair following an injury to his hands that left him unable to play. He lost his family and everything that mattered to him. Now, his ex-wife and son have been killed in a car crash and he’s trying to get sober and establish a relationship with his teenage daughter who hates him and is on a downward spiral of her own. Phee, the Luthier, will do everything in her power to save them both by bringing them back to the music.

The story is well represented in the following passage, in which Braden recalls his first encounter with Phee:
He remembers that last conversation vividly, one of few clear memories in the days and weeks after he’d lost his music. She’d stood with her foot in the door so he couldn’t slam it in her face.

“You have to play.”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t understand. Granddad said there’s a curse if you don’t.”

His laughter in response to those words had hurt more than the tears he’d been unable to shed.
“I’m already cursed. How much worse could it get?”

Plenty worse, as it turns out. Not that the cello or any mysterious curse is to blame. Braden is his own curse. Everything that has happened is his fault. All of it.
Visit Kerry Anne King's website.

Writers Read: Kerry Anne King.

--Marshal Zeringue