"The Ascent"

Allison Buccola is the author of The Ascent and Catch Her When She Falls.

She has a JD from the University of Chicago and lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and their two young children.

Buccola applied the Page 69 Test to The Ascent with the following results:

Lee Burton grew up in a reclusive cult, and she woke one morning to discover everyone was gone, including her mother and sister. The mystery of their disappearance has never been solved. Now, twenty years later, she’s trying to build a normal life for herself when a woman shows up at her front door, promising answers. On page 69, Lee has just encountered this woman (I’ll be a little vague here to avoid spoilers), and they’re walking on the Schuylkill River Trail in Philadelphia with Lee’s daughter, Lucy.

We see Lee and the woman talking, and Lee is trying to wrap her mind around the woman’s sudden appearance. Memories of her past and feelings about her abandonment are surfacing, and she’s trying to push them back down. We also see Lee’s fears about what this encounter means for her present. Her husband doesn’t know about her early years in the cult, and she doesn’t want him to find out.

Reading this page would give the reader a very good sense of the story as a whole. Lee’s relationship with this woman drives the story: Does the woman actually hold the answers to Lee’s past? Can Lee trust her? Lee’s relationship with her husband is another major source of tension, and we see hints of that here. I’m not sure it comes through fully on this page, but another question pulsing under the surface is whether Lee should trust this woman around her daughter, and so I like that the woman and Lucy are in close proximity on this page. I would say the Page 69 Test works here—but because of minor spoilers on this page, I would not recommend using it!

Visit Allison Buccola's website.

Q&A with Allison Buccola.

The Page 69 Test: Catch Her When She Falls.

Writers Read: Allison Buccola.

--Marshal Zeringue