"The Love Story of Missy Carmichael"

Beth Morrey‘s work has been published in the Cambridge and Oxford May Anthologies and shortlisted for the Grazia Orange First Chapter competition. She lives in London with her family and dog.

Morrey applied the Page 69 Test to The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, her debut novel, and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Off!” I said sternly, holding one finger in the air and experiencing a distinct lack of authority. Bob stared at me and scratched behind one ear with her back leg.

On page 69 of The Love Story of Missy Carmichael, Missy has just taken her foster dog, Bob, home for the first time, and they are becoming acquainted. Both of them are occupied with finding Bob a place to lie down. Bob favours the furniture, whereas Missy insists on the floor, but does find a blanket for the dog to lie on. They end up napping together, and there’s the sense Bob’s presence is a relaxing one, and that even as Missy falls asleep, something else has awoken in her.

It was a shame there was no fire in the grate. Maybe I’d make one up tomorrow.

It’s very strange, but I think the test really works for my book. It’s a simple, direct scene between Missy the central character, and Bob, who is the linchpin of the novel. It reflects Missy’s reluctance to foster a dog, and her lack of experience, but also gives a hint of how it’s going to work for her. I guess the only way in which it might put someone off is if it’s a reader who doesn’t like dogs. It isn’t really as ‘doggy’ a book as the page suggests. But I’d be comfortable with a browser picking that passage, as it has a nice sweet/sour mix which is reflective of the book as a whole.

Including page 70 would be an even neater insight into the book, in that it marks the end of Part One. The set-up is complete: Missy has the dog who will change her life, and next we’ll see how her world starts to open up. This section ends with a telling, brutal detail that reveals something of Missy’s history – her adoration of her grandfather, who was a hugely influential figure in her childhood:

…for the time time in my life, even since Fa-Fa told us that story about the ripper who sang nursery rhymes from the wardrobe before he cut up his victims, I hadn’t checked the cupboards before I went to sleep.

Cave canem. Beware the dog.

Missy gets Bob for protection, to make her feel safe in her home. She wants a guard dog, but what she gets is a friend – and many more friends as a result. Bob is a rescue dog, but in the end, it’s Missy who is rescued.

Visit Beth Morrey's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Her Sister's Tattoo"

Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels: Kinship of Clover (Women’s National Book Association Great Group Read, and literary fiction finalist for the Best Book Award), On Hurricane Island (semifinalist for the Massachusetts Book Award), and House Arrest. Recent essay publications include the Boston Globe, The Writer, and Guernica. Meeropol’s dramatic script telling the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children was produced most recently in Manhattan featuring Eve Ensler, Angela Davis, and Cotter Smith. A founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild, Meeropol leads their Social Justice Writing project. She lives in Northampton, MA.

Meeropol applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Her Sister's Tattoo, and reported the following:

The Page 69 Test works surprisingly well with Her Sister’s Tattoo, the story of two sisters caught up in the passion and choices of protesting the War in Vietnam. Rosa and Esther are arrested at a 1968 protest and charged with felonies. On page 69, Rosa is on trial. Esther, who has an infant daughter, is reluctantly testifying against her sister as part of her plea bargain to stay out of prison. This page explains the title of the book and helps develop the previously very close relationship of the sisters. Esther is on the witness stand looking at her sister, who refuses to meet her eyes.

Good thing, because Esther didn’t think she could hold her gaze if their eyes met. Rosa’s lawyer must have given her the same speech Joel recited about how dressing conventionally in court made a good impression on the jury. Rosa wore a white blouse under a loose blue cotton jumper. Her hair was gathered in a matching grosgrain ribbon and she had attached a gold circle pin to the rounded Peter Pan collar. …. Eather stifled a smile. If the jury had X-ray vision, if they could see beyond the gold-plated circle, through the blue jumper and cotton blouse, they would be shocked. Because tattooed on Rosa’s left breast was a small red star, a quarter-in in diameter. Esther knew that tattoo well; it was the twin of hers. … A tattoo is forever, she had thought. Like a sister.

Is a sister forever? What if beloved sisters react very differently to their arrest and charges? What if, when caught up in the criminal justice system, they must make impossible choices? Choices between loyalty to family, allegiance to the truth, and commitment to stopping an unacceptable war?

Rosa and Esther make choices that define their lives in very different but equally profound ways. The consequences become their daughters’ legacies as well, as the daughters try to heal the family political rift.

Visit Ellen Meeropol's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Blame the Dead"

Ed Ruggero is a West Point graduate and former Army officer who has studied, practiced, and taught leadership for more than twenty-five years. His client list includes the FBI, the New York City Police Department, CEO Conference Europe, the CIA, the Young Presidents Organization, Forbes, among many others. He has appeared on CNN, The History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and CNBC and has spoken to audiences around the world on leadership, leader development and ethics. He lives in Philadelphia.

Ruggero applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Blame the Dead, and reported the following:

This scene is from the point of view of Lieutenant Eddie Harkins, the protagonist of Blame the Dead, a former Philadelphia beat cop investigating a murder at a US Army Field Hospital in the wake of the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. By sheer coincidence he runs across a friend from the old neighborhood, Lieutenant Kathleen Donnelly, a nurse at the same hospital. Donnelly and her comrades contend with heat, dirt, chaos, the threat of imminent, violent death as well as the near-constant stream of shattered wounded coming back from the front.

“See this?” She pulled at the hair on the sides of her head. “Gray. I’m twenty-six years old.”

“The work doing that?” Harkins asked.

Donnelly raked her fingers through her hair, took a breath.

“Mostly the work. Also the lies.”

Harkins was quiet. Outside he could hear women’s voices, a vehicle going by, an inept driver grinding the clutch.

“Some of them ask ‘Am I going to die?’ And you know they are. Shot up bad or burned so that there’s nothing we can do except get some morphine into them, kill some of the pain. And when they ask me that question, I look them right in the eye and I lie to them.”

Donnelly wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“Jesus,” she said.

This scene was inspired by two things: my experience interviewing World War Two vets, many of whom carried painful memories of their service for five decades and more; and an episode of the old TV series China Beach, which featured interviews with real-life nurses who served in Vietnam. It wasn’t always the memory of a bullet that zinged by that stuck with the riflemen, or the endless hours the women spent in surgery, blood-soaked to the elbows. Sometimes it was one simple, painful, human interaction that defined The War for them.

The rest of the book is seeded with images—sometimes a mere flash—that might become the stuff of nightmares or might be the nucleus of some happy memory.

Visit Ed Ruggero's website.

Writers Read: Ed Ruggero.

My Book, The Movie: Blame the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Missing Sister"

Originally from Sacramento, Elle Marr explored the urban wilderness of Southern California before spending three wine-and-cheese-filled years in France. There, she earned a master’s degree from the Sorbonne University in Paris, and discovered her love of writing novels.

Currently, she lives and writes outside Portland, Oregon, with her husband, son, and one very demanding feline; she is hard at work on her second thriller.

Marr applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Missing Sister, and reported the following:

From page 69:

The poetic sound distracts me as he pulls me to his lips. What starts out as a soft kiss deepens, becomes a passionate embrace; in the background, a street performer with an accordion plays a haunting song, and I lose myself for a moment. How long has it been since I’ve connected with someone? After my parents died, I collapsed, isolating myself in my childhood home, unable, until recently, to muster the enthusiasm to continue pursuing medical school, set adrift even from my own sister, who’d lashed out at me. I’ve been craving connection with someone even if my practical side has never acknowledged it.

This paragraph from page 69 is representative of The Missing Sister because of its snapshot of grief. Three years after the deaths of her parents, Shayna remains locked in mourning, unable to move forward. Similarly, she’s still grieving her relationship with her twin sister, a loss which occurred when Angela refused to come home from Paris for their parents’ funeral. When Shayna arrives in Paris, seeking resolution from her sister’s death, she’s hoping for the closure she never obtained. That desire for answers—for validation of choices that Shayna made and can never take back—is what drives the entire plot. Grief shows up long after we think that we’re done processing it, and often leads us to act in ways we don’t recognize of ourselves. To entertain notions of what if my loved one hadn’t died? and how would my world be different if they were still here? When the possibility arises, that Shayna might be able to answer those questions, she pursues them with a frenzy she didn’t know she possessed.

Visit Elle Marr's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Everlasting"

Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835, and the novels The Story of Land and Sea and Free Men. Her writing has also appeared in The Oxford American, Granta, Literary Hub, Garden & Gun, Catapult, and Lenny. She lives in New Orleans, and currently serves as the Eudora Welty Chair for Southern Literature at Millsaps College.

Smith applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Everlasting, and reported the following:

The Everlasting tells four different Roman stories, across four centuries, and page 69 puts us in the year 1559, amidst one of Giulia de' Medici's dilemmas: whether to sleep with her new, not-beloved husband, or to be faithful to a former lover, who has left her pregnant. Someone nailed horns over the door to their house, a signal to the owner that he's being cuckolded, and Giulia's maid swears she hasn't told anyone her lady's secret.

Giulia reached for the bowl Paola now kept on the vanity. She held it in her lap until the wave calmed. “I hadn’t heard of the horns. It’s rather clever, as long as he’s the one shamed.”

Paola rolled a stocking up her lady’s leg, her eyes still wet with fear. “You’re half of a sort of daughter to me, you know that, and I don’t fight only for my own position when I tell you to go kindly with him. You Medici think it’s a farce, but I know of men, and not a hundred thousand ducats can declaw them. If you want to call it a lie and make me leave, I will, and it’ll go easier for you.”

Giulia pulled her feet back and leaned toward the kneeling nursemaid. “If Christ himself swanned down for the second coming, I’d still choose you. That’s my opinion of men.”

I laughed when I read this section! I could tell you all day long that the book has nothing to do with male behavior and my judgment thereon, but perhaps an underlying bias shines through here. This is a book about love -- spiritual and romantic, sacred and profane -- and built within love is the possibility of disappointment. One of the central narrators is the Devil, who's still reeling from having his heart broken by God; no one is immune. Each of these characters -- a child martyr, a monk, a princess, a biologist -- is searching for a more stable meaning to their lives, some foundation that can hold them up as they're buffeted by love's vicissitudes. Sometimes that's faith; in this scene, for the irreverent Giulia, it's friendship.

Visit Katy Simpson Smith's website.

Writers Read: Katy Simpson Smith.

My Book, The Movie: The Everlasting.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Pride of Eden"

Taylor Brown grew up on the Georgia coast. He has lived in Buenos Aires, San Francisco, and the mountains of western North Carolina. His books include the story collection In the Season of Blood and Gold and the novels Fallen Land and The River of Kings. All three books were finalists for the Southern Book Prize.

Brown applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Pride of Eden, and reported the following:

Page 69 includes a short, nice little scene between Anse Caulfield, the former racehorse jockey and soldier of fortune who owns Little Eden, the exotic animal sanctuary at the heart of the novel, and Anse's long-time partner, Tyler, the sanctuary's veterinarian. While trying to wrangle an escaped lioness, Henrietta, Anse was mauled -- though he and Tyler have differing attitudes about whether the lion, a long-time resident of the sanctuary, intended to hurt him.

Anse lay facedown on the bed that evening, shirtless. His scabs were finally beginning to peel away, leaving pink stripes of scar that itched. Tyler straddled him, squeezing the anti-itch ointment from a tube.

“All I’m saying is this. A lion—or any cat, for that matter—keeps her claws retracted until she’s ready to use them. Henrietta’s were out.”

Anse squeezed shut his eyes. He thought of Henri dead in the driveway of that empty house. Her heart exploded, oozing over the pavement. Her claws buried in his back. He turned his head, speaking from the side of his mouth.

“Automatic response when the bullet hit her,” he said. “Her claws coming out.”

Tyler shook her head. “Couldn’t be, Anse. Primary flaccidity—an animal’s muscles relax instantly at the moment of death.”

Anse turned his head, winding one eye up at her.

“They teach you that up at Cornell?”

Tyler leaned over him, her breasts brushing his back. Her lips grazed his ear.

“No,” she said. “You did.”

Anse mashed his forehead into the mattress, growled. Tyler bent closer.

“It’s better this way, don’t you see?” Her lips chased his ear.

“She died wild.”

At the word, a tingle ran up Anse’s spine. A drove of tiny beasts uncaged by her voice, loosed under his skin. His blood flew. Anse turned over beneath her. He buried his thumbs in the hollows of her thighs, smiling.

“Come here, you.”

If someone browsing in a bookstore or library opened the book to this page, I think this scene would give them a pretty good idea of the novel, exploring the mystery and moral entanglements of human-animal relationships, and giving them a taste of Anse's stubborn, slightly curmudeognly nature -- slightly akin, perhaps, to the Hayduke character in Edward Abbey's work. That said, most of the book takes place outside, and there's a good bit of action, which you don't see in this scene.

Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown.

My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace"

Patricia Marcantonio was born in Pueblo, Colorado. She has won awards for her journalism, short stories and screenplays. Her children's book Red Ridin’ in the Hood and Other Cuentos has earned an Anne Izard Storyteller’s Choice Award and was named an Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Commended Title, and one of the Wilde Awards Best Collections to Share with recommendations from Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books. She now lives in Idaho.

Marcantonio applied the Page 69 Test to Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace, her first Felicity Carrol mystery, and reported the following:

Felicity Carrol, my Victorian amateur detective of the Felicity Carrol series, is sometimes seen as almost too perfect. Sure she’s brilliant, wealthy and beautiful. But she is very human and flawed. She has major daddy issues. Her wealthy father neglected her so she turned to knowledge as a substitute to his love. While she can quote historical facts with her formidable memory, she is still young and learning as she goes about human nature, particularly its ability to turn evil. At times, she depends too much on science and not enough on intuition so she’ll stumble while charging ahead. Most telling is the reason she wants to solve murders and it’s not for her own fame or ego, which can sometimes flare up.

She wants justice. She has compassion for the dead.

Page 69 is a perfect example. Felicity visits the grave of a murder victim in a lonely pauper’s cemetery above the Montana mining town where the story is set. The graveyard is sad and forgotten with overgrown weeds and fallen wooden markers. The victim was a prostitute. Standing at the grave site, she can empathize with the dead’s poor life. Felicity had wanted to bring roses but couldn’t find a florist shop. Instead she brings a vow the find the killer because he’d taken everything away from the victim. And that’s very human.

Visit Patricia Marcantonio's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Degenerates"

J. Albert Mann is the author of six novels for children. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Her recent work of historical fiction about the early life of Margaret Sanger is What Every Girl Should Know. Born in New Jersey, Mann now lives in Boston with her children, cat, and husband listed in order of affection.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Degenerates, and reported the following:

In 1928, the U.S. government, using the false science of eugenics was busy incarcerating Americans with disabilities for nothing more than having a disability. All were given life sentences.

On page 69 of The Degenerates, one of the main characters, fourteen-year-old London is being dragged back to the institution after an escape attempt. This time, the School for Idiotic and Feebleminded Youth (first established in South Boston) is not playing around, and they take her to what the inmates termed “the cages.”

Leaving the nurse at the door, the two women led London down a series of hallways. This building was darker and dirtier than the one she’d been in the night before with the girls. It also smelled worse. London had lived in enough tenements to be overly familiar with the stench. Piss and shit. The group passed rooms that looked uninhabitable, but from the coughs, moans, and shuffling sounds emanating from them, it was clear that they had occupants.

Always an interesting test, I’d say this page is not necessarily representative of the book, but a great representation of the institution this young woman (and thousands like her) endured.

Visit J. Albert Mann's website.

Writers Read: J. Albert Mann.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Silence"

Daisy Pearce was born in Cornwall and grew up on a smallholding surrounded by hippies. She read Stephen King’s Cujo and The Hamlyn Book of Horror far too young and has been fascinated with the macabre ever since.

Pearce applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Silence, and reported the following:

Page 69 is the end of a chapter in which the protagonist Stella finds herself at home after a stay in hospital. She is on the phone to her aunt and it is mostly dialogue, an ebb and flow of conversation that introduces Stella to a doctor who her aunt thinks can help her. It is the first sense Stella has that she is losing her grip on reality, a matter not helped by the vodka she is slugging from the bottle found in the freezer. The final line: ‘Is this how it happens? Slowly, destroying everything, like the descent of lava’ reveals her helplessness in the face of what she believes to be her mind unravelling.

This is a pivotal moment in the text, representing one of the main themes of the story - fear of insanity - and revealing Stella's propensity to addiction. It also gives an insight into her current state of mind and her relationship to one of the only people willing to help her.

Follow Daisy Pearce on Twitter.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Between"

David Hofmeyr was born in South Africa and lives in London and Paris. In 2013 he graduated from Bath Spa University with an MA in Writing for Young People. The Between is Hofmeyr's second novel. His first book, Stone Rider, was published in 2015 and was shortlisted for the prestigious Branford Boase award for first-time novelists. He divides his time between writing and working as a strategist for Ogilvy & Mather.

Hofmeyr applied the Page 69 Test to The Between and reported the following:

Is page 69 representative of the book?

Yes, I think so.

It begins with the lead character, Ana, in a world that looks and feels like her own but is not. We’ve plunged into a mirror world, a parallel universe. Everything is familiar but different, charged with a primeval energy. Ana is afraid. And yet Malik, the mysterious boy pacing her room, is full of ease and swagger. And danger:

“Where are you from?” I demand, trying to look unimpressed, but my stomach is in knots and I feel a cold sweat coming on.

“Out there,” he says, waving a hand at the window, sauntering through the room, looking at my bookcase, tilting his head to examine the spines.

“Out there ... where?”

“Many places.”

He moves on, scanning my shelves. He lifts a tome. Philip Pullman. His Dark Materials. He knocks it back between the others with a smile. He’s calm, in control and cool, but not detached. Beneath it all, I sense a hum of raw energy. Here is someone who isn’t afraid. Who doesn’t know the meaning of fear.

I enjoyed going meta in this scene. This is a story about a multiverse. So, I like the idea of Malik finding His Dark Materials and smiling to himself. Yes, we imagine him thinking. There are worlds out there, beyond the known.

The page concludes with Ana threatening to go to the police and this marks a shift in attitude from Malik. He switches from aloof to forceful. The feeling of the scene tilts. This is not all fun and games. It’s serious.

“Look, I’m gonna call the police. If you don’t—”

“The police?” He laughs. “Gimme a break ... the police don’t matter, Ana. Not now. Not here. They can’t help.”

This quick turn of emotion is a hallmark of the story. The aim is to unsettle the reader. To throw them into limbo, to make them feel the range of emotions they, or anyone else, might feel waking up to a strange reality that is not their own.

The Between is about a girl who feels lost. She navigates her life between divorced parents, trying to find her place in the world. That’s the real story here. It charts the aftermath of divorce. The damage wrought. A loss of identity. The idea of crossing multiple universes is simply a metaphor for this feeling of limbo.

This is a story about friendship and finding courage and identity in a world that can seem utterly beyond our control. It’s about taking back control. It draws on all the sci-fi elements I love in films like Inception and The Matrix. And if you detect any undertones of Steven King in The Between, then we’re definitely on the same page...

Which, in this case, is page 69.

Visit David Hofmeyr's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Between.

Writers Read: David Hofmeyr.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Darling Rose Gold"

Stephanie Wrobel grew up in Chicago but has been living in the UK for the last three years with her husband and Cockapoo, Moose Barkwinkle. She has an MFA from Emerson College and has had short fiction published in Bellevue Literary Review. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a creative copywriter at various advertising agencies.

Wrobel applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Darling Rose Gold, and reported the following:

From page 69:

I like to think my time in prison was made easier not because of my size, but my charisma. The key—inside prison and out—is befriending the people in power. Once I had the guards and warden in my pocket, the inmates fell in line too. They began to see me as more than an obnoxiously jolly doppelganger of the Kool-Aid man. I became useful.

This passage from page 69 is representative of Darling Rose Gold as a whole because of its observations about power. In a sense, the entire book is one big power struggle between mother and daughter. Smaller struggles play out as well, between Patty and her neighbors, Patty and the justice system, Rose Gold and her friend Alex, Rose Gold and her neighbor Mrs. Stone. The list goes on and on. Patty starts at an advantage against her daughter because she knows how to play the game, how to manipulate people to get what she wants. When the reader first meets Rose Gold, she has no idea—but she’s a quick learner.

Visit Stephanie Wrobel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"A Reasonable Doubt"

Phillip Margolin has written over twenty novels, most of them New York Times bestsellers, including Gone But Not Forgotten, Lost Lake, and Violent Crimes. In addition to being a novelist, he was a long time criminal defense attorney with decades of trial experience, including a large number of capital cases.

Margolin applied the Page 69 Test to A Reasonable Doubt, his third novel in the series featuring Robin Lockwood, ex-MMA fighter and Yale law school graduate, and reported the following:

In A Reasonable Doubt, Robert Chesterfield, a magician, is murdered on stage before a packed house in 2020 and no one knows who killed him. I had a ball figuring out how to commit the murder and I also learned how to create The Chamber of Death, Chesterfield's greatest magic trick, with the help of lawyer/magicians Marshall Amiton and Robert Kabacy. Page 69 is set in 1997. Overzealous deputy district attorney Peter Ragland arrests Chesterfield for two murders and an attempted murder. This is part of the back story and is told by retired attorney Regina Barrister, who represented Chesterfield twenty years before he was murdered. The scene on pages 69-70 shows the battle of wits between the DA and the brilliant magician.

If you were browsing in a bookstore and read page 69 you would get some idea of Chesterfield's character and Peter Ragland's lack of competence, which is a central feature of the the lengthy 1997-98 flashback. The magician is a major character in the book so reading page 69 would make you want to know more about him.

Visit Phillip Margolin's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: The Third Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Alibi.

--Marshal Zeringue