The Page 69 Test: "Come Shell or High Water"

Molly MacRae spent twenty years in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Upper East Tennessee, where she managed The Book Place, an independent

bookstore; may it rest in peace. Before the lure of books hooked her, she was curator of the history museum in Jonesborough, Tennessee’s oldest town.

MacRae lives with her family in Champaign, Illinois, where she recently retired from connecting children with books at the public library.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her latest novel, Come Shell or High Water, and reported the following:

Page 69 in Come Shell or High Water is part of a getting-to-know-you type conversation between two characters. Here’s the page:
“The shell is older. I was a merchant by vocation and a conchologist by avocation.”

“A shell scientist? That’s similar to my profession. I specialize in freshwater mussels. But not just the shells. The animals that create them, too.” Wait, did I believe this conversation? What were the odds of a conchologist ghost appearing to a malacologist concussion victim?

“Fancy that connection,” he said. “I trust your experience with shells is happier than mine. I lost my life in my pursuit.”

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said with a somber half bow. “I died pursuing this magnificent helmet shell.” He reached into the case—through the glass—and stroked the shell. “The situation gives new meaning to the word attached, for I now seem to be attached to the shell.”

“Do you mind if I ask how old you were?”

“Thirty-seven. I was the younger of three brothers who left our father’s home in Rhuddlan to seek our fortunes.”

In defense of the insensitive question I asked him next, I had never heard anyone, in real life, say We left our father’s home to seek our fortunes. “To seek your fortunes? Like the three little pigs?”

His face went from confused to annoyed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That wasn’t meant to be an insult, either. It was a reference to a children’s story that might not be as old as you are. Not in its current form, anyway. It’s a fun story. Exciting. It has a wolf.”

“Apology accepted. I like a good literary reference, myself.”

“Did Allen Withrow know about you . . . being here?”

“Oh, yes. Allen and I were great friends. Friends of a philosophical nature, that is, meaning that we enjoyed each other’s company, but often disagreed.”

I’d put my hands in my pockets, and the doorknob was dig- (the last line continues on page 70)
Applying the Page 69 Test, readers will guess they might be in for a ghost story. But the reader also learns that the second person suffered a concussion and isn’t sure the ghost exists. Readers learn several things about the two characters from their exchanges—they have (or had) similar professions, they like literary references, they’re polite. From those observations, and if the ghost is real, the reader might guess this isn’t a horror novel. The two talk about a third person, Allen Withrow, in the past tense. Nothing in their conversation suggests there’s been a crime or murder, though, so unless readers know they picked up a mystery, page 69 alone won’t clue them in.

The second person in the conversation is Maureen Nash. Over the past twenty-four hours, she’s had a bit of a rough time and she doesn’t remember all of it. She knows she arrived on Ocracoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, at the end of a hurricane. That the park ranger who gave her a lift to the island warned her not to tell anyone about the favor. That she went to the beach . . . and from there her memories are muddled or missing. Except she knows she tripped over a dead body in the woods, somehow ended up unconscious on the floor of the shell shop in Ocracoke Village, and she heard someone with a beautiful tenor singing about drunken sailors. And now, on page 69, she’s met the owner of that tenor, and her life is about to get a little more muddled. Page 69 does catch the flavor of Come Shell or High Water. I also hope it piques a reader’s interest enough to make them want to flip back to page 1 and read all the way through.