Her second novel, The Cartographers, became a national bestseller, was named a Best Book of 2022 by The Washington Post, and received a 2020 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her debut, The Book of M, won the 2019 Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point.
Shepherd applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, All This and More, and reported the following:
From page 69:Visit Peng Shepherd's website.“You’re looking very starry-eyed.” Jo chuckles as she appears and hands her a glass of bubbly. “The victory’s finally hitting you?”The Page 69 Test works beautifully for All This and More. On this page, our main character Marsh has just jumped back in time to a moment in her past, so she can make a different choice and alter the course of her future life. She’s early in her quest to fix her mistakes, and is still marveling at the sheer miraculousness of this incredible power she’s been granted—is she really here, with the amazing career she’s always wanted, living the perfect life she’s always dreamed of? Can she make it stick for good?
Marsh finally stops staring at the cake and toasts her as nonchalantly as she can manage. “Used up all my steely veneer in court,” she says.
Jo takes an appreciative sip. “I’ll say. I’ve never seen a jury come back so fast in my life. I hadn’t even finished my lunch when we heard they were filing back in, and I had to stuff my face and run. I was still chewing a bite of sandwich as I slid into one of the pews!”
Marsh bursts out laughing as Jo mimes how she tried to hide her mouth as she huddled in the last row of the courtroom earlier that afternoon.
“I can’t imagine what Judge Chopra would have thought if he’d seen me, but I wasn’t going to miss the verdict for anything,” Jo finishes, still chuckling. “I’m so proud of you, Marsh.”
“We all are,” a familiar voice says, and Marsh turns to see Dylan standing behind her.
What’s Dylan doing at Mendoza-Montalvo and Hall? She gasps.
Her left thumb darts furtively forward to stroke her ring finger, to confirm there’s no ring there. How could there be? In this episode, because Marsh put her career first over everything else, her path would have followed Jo’s much more closely than it followed her original life. She and Dylan would have divorced just after Harper was born, and she would have gone on to finish law school and become a lawyer, like she’d always wanted.
Already, her head’s starting to spin a little keeping track of the details. When she and Dylan split up in each reality, how old Harper is, if there was ever a Ren. Marsh is glad that Talia has the Show Bible to make sense of it all.
“Our woman of the hour,” Victor Mendoza-Montalvo declares, then a friendly thump lands on Marsh’s shoulder as he joins their little circle. “Ah, a visitor?” Victor asks, seeing Dylan.
Marsh freezes for a moment, unsure of how to introduce him, because she still doesn’t know who Dylan is to her in this reality, but Dylan is already shaking Victor’s hand.
“I’m Dylan, Marsh’s ex,” he says casually, as if he’s completely comfortable with it.
“Oh, yes,” Victor replies, as if he faintly recollects this information—Marsh’s suspicion that she and Dylan have been divorced a long time must be correct, then. “The two of you have a daughter, right?”
But there are also the first hints of something more sinister going on just under her nose. Why, despite Marsh’s best efforts, do each of her decisions seem like they’re being manipulated by someone or something else? Why is it that every time her situation improves, her estranged husband Dylan’s fate worsens in some way? And why, out of everyone else involved, is he the only one who’s able to tell that the reality they’re all in might not be the original one?
Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (June 2018).
Q&A with Peng Shepherd.
Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (July 2024).
--Marshal Zeringue
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