"Virgin"

Hanne Blank's work has appeared to great acclaim in many print and online publications, anthologies and collections, as well as in book form.

Her new book is Virgin: The Untouched History, to which she applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

Page 69 of Virgin: The Untouched History is, I think, pretty indicative of what the book is like. It combines analysis, scholarly discussion, and juicy bits of the kind of historical stuff you just don't see in many histories, all in the same discussion.

This page brings us in at the tail end of a discussion of one of medical history's fascinating unsolved mysteries, a syndrome known for five hundred years as "the disease of virgins." This disease had a number of other names, including "greensickness" and "chlorosis," but the most important things to know about it in order to understand what is on page 69 are that it
1) was considered a serious, possibly life-threatening illness;
2) affected only virgin women, and thus usually young ones;
3) was quite common and well-known as an illness from the 16th century to the early 20th, in the same sort of way that depression or eating disorders are today; and
4) literally vanished from the medical landscape in the early 20th century, to the point that few doctors nowadays would know what you were talking about if you mentioned it.

Page 69 deals specifically with what cures were considered good for the disease of virgins: improving diet (especially with red meat, wine, and later, mineral supplements), and, as referenced in this tidbit of Elizabethan doggerel, which I quote in the book, sexual intercourse:

"A mayden, faire of ye greene sicknesse late
Pity to see, perplexed was full sore
resolvinge how t'amend her bad estate,
In this distresse Apollo doth implore
Cure for her ill; ye oracle assignes,
Keep ye the first letter of these severall lines."

(Read the first letter of every line if you want the "best cure" punchline without having to make your way through the antiquated English.)

As for what you can expect from the rest of the book? Everything from virginity tests to the Church Fathers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Spanish gypsy deflowering rituals ... and well beyond. But I think page 69, its historical long view studded with very specific (and sometimes pretty risque) examples and a sense of humor, is very much what I tried to bring to every other page as well.

Visit Hanne Blank's website and her blog, and read an excerpt from Virgin.

See the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Madonna Magdalene"

Kim Garcia's work has appeared in The Atlanta Review, Rosebud, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Mississippi Review, Brightleaf, Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops, Negative Capability and Lullwater Review, among others. She is the recipient of the 2004 Ursala LeGuin Prize, the 2002 Willard R. Espy Award, an AWP Intro Writing Award, a Hambridge Fellowsip and an Oregon Individual Artist Grant.

She applied the "page 69 test" to her poetry collection Madonna Magdalene and reported the following:

Page 69 of Madonna Magdalene is a poem called “Cain,” the third and final part of a passionate conversation I imagined out of the Genesis stories. In his own dramatic monologue Adam has mourned the loss of Paradise in his lover, Before you I slept and I have not forgotten your perfection. But in “Eve’s Answer,” Eve argues that in Paradise they were like stones falling, too stupid/ with obedience to grieve and welcomes their newly fallen state:

Only God’s fingers, that joyful grasping inside me,

could have seized such sight.

Only God within you

could have been tempted by it.

What evil can come

of such a joyful beginning?

“Cain” answers that question, reminding us that even a murderer was once a beautiful baby, as perfect as any Christ child. Giving voice to the tender complexities between mother and child, between lovers, and lovers of God, is what I hoped to do in Madonna Magdalene, and I’m grateful to "Page 69" for giving me a chance to think about them again here. For me beauty and suffering and joy can bloom together in a single moment of incarnation, as they do here in the world’s first child.

Genesis Suite: Cain

It is a fresh-fallen world,
and Cain is master of it.
First tooth, first step, first word.
He will be second in nothing.

The raw yoke of the sun
runs warm light over his downy back.
The stone floor is furred with gold.
Cain’s day is fat and vigorous;
and what he sees, he possesses whole.

In the night his cradle rocks
under the open window
as he moves his heavy head,
round and white as the moon,
from side to side.

He dreams what all children will dream:
endless, indivisible dominion.
His small hands grip hard
against the rough cotton under his body.
Soft nails scratch quietly as they move.

The moonlight slides over his body
making the new down on his head
cold, bright silver
and all his body white with light.

Visit Kim Garcia's website and check out her poetry available online.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Tales from the Town of Widows"

James Cañón's English short fiction has been anthologized in Bésame Mucho, (Painted Leaf Press), and Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas, (Cleis Press).

His debut novel is Tales from the Town of Widows, to which he applied the "page 69 test" and reported the following:

What would happen if all the men of an isolated village were swept off in a war and the women were left alone?

My first novel, Tales from the Town of Widows, tells the story of Mariquita, a mountain village in Colombia, where all the men have been forcibly recruited by communist guerrillas to fight for their cause. In a single tragic event, the women and children of the village are left alone to deal with both nature's powerful elements and the absence of the men who had ruled their lives. Now virtual widows, the women must fend for themselves, must get beyond their grief and pull together to survive. In the process of rebuilding their lives, they challenge the strong male orientation of the world and discover their own strength, self-sufficiency and power. Ultimately, they create a social order based on female values: harmony, cooperation and respect for every individual. This all-female utopia is put to the test when, after sixteen years, four men return to the village…

Page 69 of Tales from the Town of Widows is the third page of the chapter called “The Teacher Who Refused to Teach History.” In this chapter, Cleotilde, a mysterious old woman displaced by the war, stops in Mariquita on her way to the south. She is welcomed in the poor home of fourteen-year-old Virgelina Saavedra and her sulky grandmother Lucrecia.

Cleotilde felt as though Lucrecia were scrutinizing her face and body for some sign of wealth. She truly hoped Lucrecia wasn’t expecting her to pay for putting her up for a night. Cleotilde had barely enough cash in her purse to pay for the bus ticket that would take her far away from this decayed village.

Page 69 illustrates some of the physical and emotional consequences of the Colombian forty-year-old conflict, as well as the sentiments of Colombians toward the war.

“As you can see, we’re very poor,” Lucrecia said.

“Oh, aren’t we all?” Cleotilde interposed. “This war has left us all in financial straits.” She wondered if Lucrecia knew the word straits. You can’t even tell who’s worst, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, or the government… With the situation the way it is, tell me, who’s going to employ an old woman like myself?”

“Nobody,” Lucrecia replied, looking a little frustrated that Cleotilde’s speech had ruled out any possibility of her making a few pesos that night. “We have nothing to offer you but coffee. You want a cup of coffee?” she said.

Cleotilde thanked her, saying that it was too late for coffee, that she asked for nothing but a place to sleep and a candle. “I like to read before going to sleep, don’t you?”

“I don’t read or write,” the woman stated resolutely, as though she were proud of it.

“Sweet Lord! I can’t imagine not being able to read.” Then, addressing Virgelina, who was trimming the wick of a fresh candle with her teeth, she asked, “Do you read?”

The girl shook her head.

“Little girl,” Cleotilde said, raising her index finger in the air. “You ought to know that education is a tool for success.”

“Women around here don’t need no education,” Lucrecia said bitterly. “Besides, the school’s been closed for over two years.”

“Two years? How dreadful!”

Virgelina handed Cleotilde the candle and an empty Coca-Cola bottle to serve as a holder. “The magistrate promised us the school will reopen soon,” the girl said softly. “As soon as a teacher gets hired.”

“A teacher?” Cleotilde said, getting up from her seat. “Isn’t that a coincidence? I’m a licensed teacher.”

After hearing about the job opportunity, Cleotilde decides to apply for the job. But there’s a problem: she refuses to teach history. Having witnessed in her youth the horrors of a civil war, she opted for disregarding the past, and thus she stopped teaching the country’s appalling history that has made a victim of her.

Visit James Cañón's website and read an excerpt from Tales from the Town of Widows.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Thousand Suns"

Alex Scarrow's A Thousand Suns is a nominee for a Best First Novel Thriller Award.

He applied the "page 69 test" to the novel and reported the following:

Page 69 is a very handy page to read ... our protagonist is about to make a discovery aboard the wreck of a B-17 bomber, submerged off the coast of New England since the last week of the second World War. And with this discovery laid out before the reader, the book is ready to segue back into the past - the dying days of the war, to witness the Germans putting in place the final components of audacious plan ... an attempt to swing the war around by dropping the world's very first atom bomb on New York. This is a really good page on which to stumble into the story, you're just about to hit that revelatory stage of the book.

Visit the Scarrow Brothers' website.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Big Numbers"

A former reporter for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and the Los Angeles Times, Jack Getze covered financial and economic issues for more than 15 years. Switching professions, Getze later sold stocks and bonds for a regional securities firm on the New Jersey Shore.

Big Numbers, his first published novel, is based on his experiences as a retail broker, sales manager, and financial executive. He applied the "page 69 test" to the novel and reported the following:

I'm disappointed my page 69 didn't have more humor on it, as I think Big Numbers makes most readers laugh a lot. But I have to admit the passage is representative of the suspense novel, even containing reference to my protagonist's symbol of desperation, the pick-up mounted camper he lives in. And this page clearly shows my sparse writing style. Page 69 begins with a one-liner that doesn't need a set-up, and I carried the scene a few graphs into page 70 because this is the end of Chapter Twenty.

I mean how can a guy compete with something that’s fourteen inches long and hums?

I open my eyes. The hospital room is filled with gray morning light.

A dark human shape comes into focus at the foot of the steel bed and my head snaps off the pillow. Pain shoots down my neck. My blood pumps with adrenaline. Who is that?

“Hiya, Carr. Detective Mallory of the Branchtown Police.”

I sigh, take a breath. My heart begins to slow down. I wonder if cops do these things on purpose. And I know this guy, too, thought we were sort of friends. Mallory is one of only six detectives on the Branchtown force, a tall Irishman with graying red hair and hard blue eyes. We coached T-ball together three years ago.

“Hey, Jim. This an official visit?”

“It’s official,” he says. “I need to ask you a few questions about the incident at Shore Securities yesterday. First, tell me in your own words exactly what happened when you encountered your client Samuel Attica?”

“Samson, actually.”

“Okay. Samson Attica.”

I go through the whole episode ninety-nine-percent truthfully, using enough detail to make myself comfortable with the story. But in the end, it’s a story. Of course I could see Mr. Vick had a gun. His famous Smith & Wesson. But I’m not ratting out the boss.

“You’re telling me you didn’t see a weapon in Vick Bonacelli’s hand?”

“He could have had a gun,” I say. “He could have had a box of candy, or flowers. I didn’t look.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

“Why? Scared you’ll lose your job? Vick already told us he was the shooter.”

A much younger Branchtown detective scurries into my hospital room. It’s Mallory’s partner, I guess. The kid looks like an eighteen-year-old Eagle Scout. “Jim. I need to talk to you,” he says.

Mallory and the Eagle Scout are only out of my sight and earshot maybe thirty seconds, but Detective Mallory’s hot-wired when he saunters back to my bed. Flushed around the neck. Eyes brighter. Like a new user and current beneficiary of stimulant drugs.

“You own a pickup truck with a camper?” Mallory says.

“Yup.”

“A yellow 1993 Chevy with lots of rust?”

“Bought it three weeks ago.”

Mallory and his young partner exchange a glance. When my former T-ball coaching mate puts his gaze back on me, Detective James Mallory of the Branchtown Police Department thinks he’s holding a straight flush to my pair.

“Put your pants on, Carr. We’re going for a ride.”

Visit Jack Getze's website and read an excerpt from Big Numbers.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Monster Nation"

David Wellington is a writer living in New York City. His books include the trilogy that starts with Monster Island and is followed by its prequel, Monster Nation. Monster Planet is the third novel in the series.

He applied the "page 69 test" to Monster Nation and reported the following:

Monster Nation is a road story, a travelogue through an apocalyptic wasteland, and in this regard page 69 is strangely representative. The heroine and her associates come across a town already touched by the zombie epidemic where paranoia has taken over. Nilla, who is undead but doesn’t always look it, feels the weight of staring eyes on her and wishes she could turn invisible.

There’s a lot more to the book — and page 69 fails to capture the fast-paced action segments which are the bread and butter of the story. You don’t get to see the National Guard fighting a rear guard action to protect evacuees being rushed out of Denver as the dead come swarming out of every alley. You don’t get the creepy, dreadful horror bits, like the deadly chess game between Nilla and a mindless, armless zombie over who will eat a screaming victim first, or the despair that sets in as the authorities begin to realize they can’t stop or even slow down the spread of the disaster. You don’t get Bannerman Clark, the good soldier who finds himself in over his head, a pawn in political games even as he tries to find a way to stop the on-rushing Armageddon. It doesn’t contain any of the mystical or occult elements, it doesn’t contain Mael Mag Och the two thousand year old mummified Druid who has proclaimed himself the major domo of the end of the world, nor does it address what caused the epidemic. In fact Page 69 doesn’t contain a single (traditional) zombie.

Still I think it does the book a certain brand of justice. It’s got the fear and the desperation, the need to move and escape that informs the book’s tone. It introduces Nilla well without giving away any of her secrets.

Visit David Wellington's website to learn about the trilogy and his other books.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Keeper"

Sarah Langan received her MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University. She studied with Michael Cunningham, Nicholas Christopher, Helen Schulman, and Maureen Howard, among others, all of whom have been instrumental to her work. She is currently pursuing a Master's in Environmental Health Science/Toxicology at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

The Keeper is her first novel. She applied the "page 69 test" to it and reported the following, starting with the text from page 69:

A few years ago when she had been driving, just to drive, to get away from the colicky baby whose fretting never ceased, she had discovered the tree graveyard. She’d pulled over to the side of the road and touched the massive stumps. Her fingers had traced their ridges: countless years recorded by slim bands of wood. She listened for the screaming. She never heard it.

At her exit, Georgia turned off the highway. By the time she traversed the Messalonski River, she had managed to forget the trials of the day. She concentrated on the comfortable way the town made her feel. With the heat blasting through the vents and the rain falling hard outside, she felt like she was wrapped inside a warm cocoon.

At six PM that Thursday evening she pulled into the driveway of her childhood home, a half-mile south of Main Street on a cul de sac that led to the parking lot of the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Sorrow.

“You home?” she heard her father call when she got into the house.

“Coming.” She found him playing a hand of solitaire and smoking a cherry cigar behind the desk in his study.

Ed O’Brian was one of the few men she knew who was larger than herself. Even now, as his bones shrank with age, when he stood next to her, she never wondered whose shadow was bigger. "Everything hunkey dorey?" he asked very slowly and calmly. It was the only way he ever spoke.

Georgia sighed. "Fine. He's fine. Nine stitches, but he'll live."

Thematically, page 69 is pretty representative of my novel. A burdened woman is trying her best to soldier on in a town where those around her are drowning. Georgia is The Keeper’s optimist, and I like her for that. She’s the breath of life that the density of such a dark story needs, and I think her strength is an inspiration to the other characters. Without her, they wouldn’t grasp for stars nearly so high.

The Keeper is about a small paper mill town in Maine, and the people who remain there after the mill has closed. They lack the impetus to leave, but have no reason to stay. The central characters are the town pariah Susan Marley, her younger sister Liz, her mother Mary, her former lover Paul, and her former babysitter Georgia. The people of the town are haunted by nightmares of Susan. After she dies, their dreams start to come true.

As far as plot goes, this section is a pause in action, so it probably doesn’t give a very good indication of overall style. Susan is about to fall down a flight of stairs, Paul’s wife is about to leave him, and all hell is about to break loose. The nice part is, this page is G-rated, so I’ve got a lot less ‘splaining to do, as Ricky Ricardo used to say.

Visit Sarah Langan's website and read an excerpt from The Keeper.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The End As I Know It"

Kevin Shay was the website editor of McSweeney’s in 2000 and 2001, and he co-edited Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans, an anthology of humor from the McSweeney’s site. His short humor pieces have appeared in print and online in McSweeney’s, eCompany Now, Salon, Modern Humorist, and the anthology 101 Damnations. Two of his one-act plays were performed in San Francisco in 2003 and 2004 as part of the Bruno’s Island New Plays Festival.

He applied the "page 69 test" to his first novel, The End as I Know It: A Novel of Millennial Anxiety, and reported the following:

Page 69 of The End as I Know It finds narrator Randall Knight in Denver, at the home of his uncle Frank and aunt Lela. It's October, 1998, and Randall has arrived to warn his relatives, as he's attempting to warn all his friends and family, about the impending worldwide catastrophe that the Y2K computer bug will soon cause.

To his dismay, however, he's discovered that cousin Derek and his wife have become fanatical multi-level marketers, and they've roped a reluctant Frank and Lela into selling Amway along with them.

"...I have to admit, Uncle Frank, this ... business is not something I'd expect to find you involved in."

"I know. I know it. What can I say? Lee thought it was important to support the kids."

"Well, I hope it works out for you."

Frank smiles. "If it does, you'll be the first one invited to the mansion."

This is a recurring element throughout the novel: many of the people on whom Randall descends to spread the Y2K gospel turn out to be too wrapped up in their own cultlike obsessions to listen to his cultlike obsession. Of course, he doesn't perceive the similarity.

The page also touches on the extent to which Randall has been dismantling his personal relationships. His father, a historian, is under investigation for alleged plagiarism. Randall hasn't been speaking to Dad, and doesn't want his uncle to reveal his whereabouts:

"Hey, your secret's safe with me. But Randall, listen. You know, I can't blame you for being upset. I mean, Lela and I were very surprised to hear about the whole situation. But look, even if he did do it, which, hey, wait until all the facts are in, right?"

Like Nicole, he's jumped to the conclusion that Dad and I are fighting about the damn plagiarism. What kind of self-righteous prig do they take me for?

In fact, Randall doesn't much care about his father's academic transgressions; their estrangement was a consequence of his scoffing dismissal of the Y2K crisis. And this is far from the only bridge Randall's burned, or is about to.

We all know Y2K didn't have calamitous consequences, so for the reader of The End as I Know It, there's not much dramatic tension surrounding what will actually happen with computers. Instead, it's the question of what will happen to Randall that drives the book. How far will this guy go in alienating himself from everyone he cares about? And will he be able to pull himself back from this paranoid brink?

Visit Kevin Shay's website and read an excerpt from The End As I Know It.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Yellowcake"

Ann Cummins is the author of Red Ant House, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best Book of the Year. She has had her stories published in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Quarterly West, and the Sonora Review, among other publications, as well as The Best American Short Stories 2002.

Her new novel is Yellowcake, to which she applied the "page 69 test" and discovered the following:

Page 69 may be the single page in Yellowcake that most aptly represents the book’s underbelly — the nightmare. The dreamer struggling to wake is Ryland Mahoney. Once a foreman at a uranium mill on the Navajo reservation, he’s now sick. While awake he doesn’t blame radiation poisoning for his ill health, but when his guard is down, fear and guilt creep in. Other characters in the novel have their own dark nights. Twenty-five year old Becky Atcitty, a Navajo woman who lost her father to the mill, struggles with rage at his murderers; her cousin, Delmar, a man of appetites, struggles with his own libido; Delmar’s father, Sam, struggles with his obsession for Delmar’s mother, while Lily, Sam’s former wife, can’t get over her philandering ex-husband.

Set in the high desert of northern New Mexico and the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, the land has a subterranean pulse that radiates through its inhabitants, channeling the phantom past, connecting them all in an atomic present.

But in small ways, all of the characters change the chemistry, finding stability on dangerous ground. During his dark night, twenty-five year old Delmar is running on empty down a desert road. He starts playing chicken with another car and finds a winning defense against hidden cops up ahead.

“Delmar watches his speedometer climb to seventy-five. Eighty. He closes in, breathing down the Mazda’s neck, a one-car length. ‘Go, baby go.’ And the yellow gas light stops blinking, starts shining. Ninety. Fast little Mazda. Rocketing along the straight and narrow.

“‘Call you Zoom,’ he says, taking his foot off the pedal, shifting to neutral, and dropping back just before they enter Bloomfield’s speed-trap zone, while the Mazda jets ahead, a decoy should anybody be out there watching. Delmar knows this country. He’s been busted here. This country he knows well.

Read a brief description of Yellowcake and an excerpt.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Breathe"

Penni Russon was born in Tasmania in 1974 and now lives in Melbourne, Australia. Her "Undine trilogy," published by Random House in Australian and Greenwillow in the US, is a series of magical books set in Hobart’s streets and the surrounding bush and seascapes.

She applied the "page 69 test" to Breathe, the second book in the trilogy, and reported the following:

Oh what a fascinating and illuminating idea. I think all writers should have to sum up their themes from page 69, I'm sure it would make us better writers! In the hardcover edition of Breathe (Greenwillow, 2007) page 69 definitely illustrates many of the themes and tensions of the novel.

Page 69 finds Undine and her mother, Lou, having a conversation about ostensibly sex (the not having of it), though Undine suspects it's also a veiled way for Lou to talk about Undine's magic, the dangerous and chaotic force that Lou has already persuaded Undine to suppress.

"And then," Lou went on, "once you went so far, it felt like there was no going back, no putting it way for later. Do you know what I mean?" Suddenly Undine wondered if Lou was just talking about sex or whether this was just a roundabout way of talking about the magic.

This tells us a lot about Undine's slightly dysfunctional but still close relationship with her mum and it shows us that to Lou the magic is even more taboo than sex.

But also this section shows that the magic is sited in the corporeal, related to the body's impulses and to Undine's emerging identity as she transforms from child to adult. The link between sex and magic is actually all about power – who has it? Who doesn't? In particular I was interested, when writing Undine, in the fact that sixteen year old girls are actually extremely powerful, even if they're not sure how to use their power (I think we often forget because we're so busy thinking of the ways in which they're disempowered). Also that if you don't have a religious upbringing (and many people don't these days) there's no roadmap for a lot of these issues, the values and morals around them are ambiguous, just like the magic. Undine lives in a postmodern world, represented by the chaotic and unruly force of the postmodern magic. Understanding her power and negotiating boundaries of self is Undine's journey, and sex is definitely a part of that.

Visit Penni Russon's website and read an excerpt from Breathe.

Russon's blog is called Eglantine's Cake.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Big Blind"

Ray Banks applied the "page 69 test" to his debut novel, The Big Blind, and reported the following:

This Page 69 test is possibly a little more uncomfortable for me than some of the others, because I haven't actually looked at The Big Blind for a good couple of years. It has all the puppy fat and gawkiness of a debut, and yet....

Page 69 is a pretty decent microcosm of the entire book (all 170 pages of it). We find our narrator, double-glazing salesman Alan Slater, at an illegal poker game run by one of the croupiers at a local casino. Slater's ostensibly there as moral support to his drunken, bigoted and violent best friend, Les Beale, but his girlfriend's asleep back at his flat and he's in no state to do anything but sit and talk rubbish with a stoner known as The Waste. Needless to say, Slater becomes worried about his girlfriend's well-being once the paranoia hits.

I mean, I'm thinking I left at a stupid hour of the morning and I'm concerned about her getting home in one piece. My area's pretty safe, but I'm not sure about her neighbourhood. I know there's a lot of students knocking about there, but that's why the scallies hang around too.

Great, now I'm worried sick.

"Call it," says Beale, "and raise fifty."

"Nah," says Phil. "No way. String bet."

"We're not in the fuckin' card room," says Beale.

"Card room rules, Les," says Stevie.

I'm wondering if I left any money out that she could've used for a cab. I'm praying she didn't try to walk it – it's miles from my place to hers.

"Y'alright?" says The Waste.

"I dunno," I say, gulping back the beer.

"You want to watch that mixture, mate. Drink's a demon. I tell you that?"

I shift my weight in the chair. My heart's starting to pound and my vision's going tunnel.

"Fine," says Beale. "I'll take the fuckin' thing back."

There are a couple of things I had to stop myself from changing as I copied that out. But bizarrely enough, the page is indicative of the book – a lot of worrying, poker, alcohol and copious swearing. Unfortunately, one of my favourite exchanges happens on the next page. But this isn't the Page 70 Test.

Visit Ray Banks' website, "The Saturday Boy."

Banks' forthcoming novels are Saturday's Child and Donkey Punch.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Catching Genius"

Kristy Kiernan applied the "page 69 test" to her debut novel, Catching Genius, and reported the following:

After my initial disappointment at the lack of heart-pounding prose on page 69 of Catching Genius, I realized that it does, in fact, capture a major chunk of plot as well as most of the characters.

Connie Sykes -- wronged wife, frustrated mother, musician, sister, and daughter -- is talking to her mother at the beginning of the scene. Their relationship, slightly contentious but loving, comes through in the dialogue, which centers on the mother trying to get her two estranged daughters, Connie and Estella (the math genius of the title) together.

Once the phone call ends, we see how Connie's home life revolves around discovering her husband's secrets, hiding secrets of her own, and how difficult her marriage has become while trying to raise two very different boys, two very different ways.

What's missing on page 69 is Connie and her sister Estella's relationship, which is the main thread of the book. It's hinted at in the beginning, but there is no sense of Estella in this section, nor is there a sense of Connie beyond that of "family woman." This particular domestic scene is one of few in the book that showcases Connie as a typical suburban mother and wife, and I don't believe that captures who Connie really is, it's merely her mask. And yet, shedding that daily mask that we all wear is a large part of what the book is about, so perhaps it's more indicative of the rest of the book than I initially thought.

Also missing is a strong sense of place, in this case the West Coast of Florida, which is an important part of the book.

The real challenge of the page 69 test is, does it make a reader want to read more? I hope it raises enough questions in the reader's mind that they'd want to read more, at least to find out if Connie and Estella's mother can get them together, and what sparks fly if she succeeds.

Catching Genius, page 69:

"She's looking forward to seeing you," she said.

"She said that?" I didn't believe her. She was just trying to soften us up before we saw each other. She'd probably told Estella the exact same thing.

"Yes, she did. And this is a perfect time for the two of you--"

"I get it, Mother," I interrupted. "I'll talk to Luke."

When I hung up I gathered Gib's keyboard and cell phone and stashed them in my closet just as I heard the garage door rumble up. I met Luke in the kitchen and held the test results out to him as he walked in the door. He put his briefcase on the counter as he read it and then looked at the report card again.

"So he takes summer school," he finally said, shrugging.

"But don't you see that this is a bigger problem than just taking summer school?"

He sighed. "No, I don't. What's the problem?"

"He's hiding things, Luke. Even from you."

He looked startled. "All kids hide things from their parents when they become teenagers," he said, but he sounded less certain. "I'll talk to him."

"He's in his room. I took his phone and keyboard and told him no television."

"Damn, Connie," Luke protested. "You should have waited until I got home so we could decide what to do about this together."

"I'm his mother. I did what I felt I had to do, and you weren't here, were you?"

Where were you, Luke?

I remembered Bob's advice, remembered the paperwork I'd been gathering, the trips I'd made to a new bank, the jewelry I'd hidden there. We both had our secrets, and my question went unasked.

He shook his head at me and walked out of the kitchen. Carson came in, wrapped in a big towel, and I made him a snack while Luke talked to Gib. When Luke came back downstairs his face was sober.

"Hey, buddy," he said absently to Carson. "Want to give me and your mom a few minutes alone?"

Visit Kristy Kiernan's website and read an excerpt from Catching Genius.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.

--Marshal Zeringue