"Roar Back"

John Farrow is the pen name of Trevor Ferguson, who has written numerous novels and plays, all to extraordinary acclaim. His Émile Cinq-Mars crime series has been published around the world and cited by Booklist as "one the best series in crime fiction today," while Die Zeit in Germany suggested that it might be the best series ever.

Farrow applied the Page 69 Test to Roar Back, the newest novel in the Émile Cinq-Mars series, and reported the following:

A fun test, especially as Page 69 of Roar Back provides a glimpse into the novel at an intriguing moment. In a complex tale that moves from petty crime into major gang machinations that demand the involvement of multiple police forces, the page offers a simple cop-and-suspect exchange. My detective is questioning a teenager following a rash of burglaries which, when investigated, yielded a murder. One young man says he slept through it all. Cinq-Mars is not convinced that he did.

‘Did you see anybody marking doors with yellow chalk?’

‘No.’

‘Anybody hanging around lately who looked suspicious?’

‘Everybody looks suspicious.’

‘Try not to be a smart-ass, OK? You’ve been good until now. Don’t start.’

‘OK. No. I haven’t seen anybody look more suspicious than usual. Why ask me?’

‘Because half a squad of cops went through your apartment. You could barely open an eyelid. Makes it look as though you knew what was going on. That you didn’t need to ask.’

On the page, Cinq-Mars will assess him and try to penetrate the young person’s attitudes and culture to see what that might reveal.

‘Anyone come around trying to recruit kids like you?’

‘Kids like me?’

‘Kids in general.’

He shrugged. ‘The usual. If that’s what you mean.’

‘What’s the usual?’

‘Pedophiles. Pushers. The usual.’

Cinq-Mars finds it interesting that he uses the word pedophiles rather than a slur. He then asks if he’ll help him out if anyone attempts to recruit young thieves, and he tries to create a positive connection by discussing the boy’s habit of using a tree limb for chin-ups.

‘How many chin-ups can you do?’

The boy looked across at the maple. ‘Thirty. The bark cuts into my hands or I’d do more.’

‘Then I won’t challenge you. I could blame the bark, but you’re doing too many for me.’

This is the first of a number of talks between the two of them as Cinq-Mars figures out the youth’s place in the midst of everything. He will try out various conjectures and ultimately be surprised at how the matter shakes down with the boy and his dad. At this moment in the novel Cinq-Mars is at an early stage and determining if his relationship with this youth and others will be adversarial or cooperative. The writer, at least, enjoyed their talks.

Visit John Farrow's website and Trevor Ferguson's Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Vera Violet"

Melissa Anne Peterson grew up in a rainy working-class logging town in Washington State. She received a BA and BS in writing and biology from The Evergreen State College and an MS from the University of Montana. She has worked in endangered species recovery in Washington and Montana for twelve years. Her writing has been published by Camas, Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, Oregon Quarterly, and Seal Press.

Peterson applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Vera Violet, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Vera Violet is at the beginning of a chapter, so it’s short. The novel’s protagonist, Vera, reminisces about the rugged landscape she grew up in, “I thought about swimming in bright blue Lake Cushman. I imagined fishing for steelhead in the Wynoochee River. I knew the water in the Chehalis ran vivid and green. In my mind, I walked and walked and never stopped dreaming.”

Later on the page, she analyzes her relationship with her brother, “Colin and I walked everywhere. We walked uptown and down. We sat in the All Night Diner for too long. We ordered one cup of coffee between us—paid for it with nickels and quarters.”

I think the page 69 test works perfectly for the book in three ways. First it shows Vera’s constant longing for home combined with the twisted complexity of her relationship with it. Next it shows that Vera is a dreamer processing trauma, and lastly it highlights the importance of her relationship with her troubled brother.

All of these things are central themes in the book.

When Vera recalls fond memories of Pacific Northwest fish and rivers it contrasts sharply with post logging environmental degradation. Watching the ecosystem fracture as fish die changes Vera. It makes her angry at the unregulated capitalism that caused such damage. Observing her parents lose social and economic power after logging became unprofitable, also makes her feel that everything she loves is vulnerable.

Vera is also a romantic reeling from a brutal reality check. The book delves into the psychology of poverty and Vera’s desperate and nervous attempt to escape from it. She keeps her own unspoken, endangered dreams of economic and social utopia. She can only imagine this paradise after violent and irrevocable change.

Change she doesn’t know how to make.

The last thing the page 69 test does is explore her connection to her brother, Colin. After her mother leaves and her father succumbs to despair, Vera becomes very close to her brother. Together, they navigate drug-riddled poverty and watch as one by one, friends and family fall to violence, prison, or addiction.

In a larger context, the page is set in the uncertain present looking back at worrisome memories. Page 69 captures the beauty, confusion, isolation, and love that recur throughout the story.

Visit Melissa Anne Peterson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Foreverland"

Nicole C. Kear is the author of the memoir Now I See You, chosen as a Must-Read by People, Amazon, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, Redbook, and Marie Claire UK among others. Her books for children include the new middle grade novel Foreverland, the chapter series The Fix-It Friends, and the middle grade series The Startup Squad, co-written with Brian Weisfeld. Her essays appear in the New York Times, Good Housekeeping, New York, Psychology Today, Parents, as well as Salon, the Huffington Post and xoJane. She teaches non-fiction writing at Columbia University and the NYU School of Professional Studies.

A native of New York, Kear received a BA from Yale, a MA from Columbia, and a red nose from the San Francisco School of Circus Arts. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, three children and two teddy bear hamsters.

Kear applied the Page 69 Test to Foreverland and reported the following:

On page 69:

Fun fact: Places that aren't scary get scary in a hurry when you are alone in the dark.

The cheesy, harmless Haunted House is now giving me goosebumps so intense that I may require medical attention. Here, under the bed, in the darkness, I even half believe that zombies and vampires and ghosts are real. The dark does that. It's like a key that unlocks the door to your worst imaginings.

As soon as I hear the door slam, I want to crawl out from under the bed and switch all the lights back on. I don't, of course. That's a rookie move. What if Flip Flop Girl forgot her phone or keys or wallet, or Tiny Braid Girl left her special comb that she uses to make such tiny braids? You don't have to watch too many scary movies to figure out Rule Number One of not getting murdered is: never assume the coast is clear.

Yes, I think this test works for Foreverland! It actually brings us to the first page of one of my favorite chapters, where 12-year-old Margaret spends the night in the amusement park's Haunted House, sleeping in the bed next to an animatronic Dracula. "Fun fact:" is a running thread in Margaret's narrative voice, and this excerpt touches on her fear of the dark, which is strikingly relevant since Margaret struggles with anxiety throughout the book. It's part of why running away from home is such an unexpected move for her. I also think the blend of interiority with the forward motion of the plot found here is really illustrative of the book as a whole.

The one element of the book that isn’t captured on page 69 (and it’s an important one!), is the friendship between Margaret and Jaime, since they haven’t yet become friends at this point. We see Margaret’s loneliness on this page, and that’s an important part of why she left home – she’s lost her best friend, feels invisible in middle school, and is even ignored by her sister, with whom she used to share a deep connection. But what we don’t get to see is the life-changing friendship she forges at the park with Jaime, a fellow runaway. Jaime is Margaret’s polar opposite – where she is shy, cautious, doubting, he is gregarious, reckless, over confident. The two help themselves to an all-access, after hours pass, complete with junk food overload, DIY makeovers, and an unlimited ticket to ride. Along the way, Jaime teaches Margaret bigger lessons too, about riding the roller coaster of life — how to let go and maybe even enjoy the wild ride. And, as in any good friendship, she teaches him something, too: how to hold on and stay connected, even when it feels too hard to bear. This is where so much of the heart of the book, and a lot of the fun resides, and we don’t get a glimpse of it on page 69. So, my advice is: start from page one and keep reading!

Visit Nicole C. Kear's website.

Q&A with Nicole C. Kear.

My Book, The Movie: Foreverland.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Empire City"

Matt Gallagher is the author of the novels Empire City and Youngblood, a finalist for the 2016 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, The Paris Review and Wired, among other places. He’s also the author of the Iraq war memoir Kaboom and coeditor of, and contributor to, the short fiction collection Fire & Forget: Short Stories from the Long War.

Gallagher applied the Page 69 Test to Empire City and reported the following:

Much of page 69 in Empire City consists of a formative wartime memory of Sebastian Rios, one of the novel's main characters:

Sebastian yawned and his right leg began twitching. He took off his sunglasses and chewed on one of the ends. Then he popped a blue Valium from his pocket and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. It's all good, he thought. All good. Something about the noise, and the sweat, and the flashing lights, and all the talking with Flowers, made him think of the night he'd been rescued. The short guy with the asterisk scar had gone home, so the other militants had unbound him and let him join the dominoes game. The one with the crooked smile and construction-worker hands knew bits of English and was asking why America could put a man on the moon but not bring electricity to the lands it invaded. It was a fine question and Sebastian hadn't known the answer. Then the helicopters came on like a tempest, and the whole building began shaking. They'd bound and blindfolded him again and hid him in a pile of loose blankets and boxes and told him not to even think about making a sound and they all grabbed their AKs and ran upstairs and gunshots rang out in mad, dizzy minutes and then there was a pause like a long echo and he smelled ice of all things so he'd sat up and pushed off the blindfold against a box corner just in time to see the whole world turn to the brightest, darkest star and-

Though certainly a bit biased as the novel's author, I think the "Page 69 Test" works very well for Empire City. It grapples with ideas and themes prevalent to the novel as a whole, and gives readers a sense of the style and language they can find throughout the book. (Particularly in the chapters following Sebastian, as he is one of three protagonists in the story.)

One of Empire City's most prominent themes is how we all, at times, alter the past for the sake of the present, and this memory of a hostage raid gone awry links many characters in my story, whether military veterans or civilians, such as Sebastian. Indeed, finding the hidden truths of the raid's particulars will soon become Sebastian's raison d'être, though he's only just beginning that journey on this page. Of the three protagonists, he's the most introspective, so these moments in scene when he slips off by himself to escape and "think" (or daydream, in this case) fits the interiority of his character and allows me as the author to build out the wider backstory of Empire City.

Visit Matt Gallagher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Death of an American Beauty"

Mariah Fredericks was born and raised in New York City, where she still lives today with her family. She is a graduate of Vassar College with a BA in history.

Fredericks applied the Page 69 Test to Death of an American Beauty, the third Jane Prescott mystery, and reported the following:

I love the page 69 challenge. It’s always fascinating to open your own book and assess it from a single page. It forces you to confront: did I make the best use of this space in the narrative that I could?

The action of page 69 in Death of an American Beauty is chaotic. Jane Prescott, lady’s maid, has been dragged into rehearsals for a society pageant called “Stirring Scenes of the Emancipation,” a display meant to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lincoln’s proclamation. In one page, she corrals a gaggle of disgruntled ladies, starts mending their costumes, critiques Julia Ward Howe’s lyrics for the Battle Hymn of the Republic…and meets Leo Hirschfeld.

Leo Hirschfeld is a new character in the Jane Prescott series. When he’s not playing piano for the pageant, he has any number of jobs including singing waiter and pianist at the Union Square nickelodeon. He is brash, ambitious, and buoyantly optimistic, predicting that one day, “All Broadway will be one big Leo Hirschfeld production.”

On page 69, all we see Leo do is play the piano and react to the terrible singing around him. Jane notices that he is about her age and physically attractive—first things first. But she also notices how he absorbs the moods and rhythms around him. “…he seemed to let it run right through him—the tension, the comedy, the embarrassment…” On the next page, he starts turning the ladies’ arguments into music. Jane decides he is a “human commutator,” someone capable of taking various energies and channeling them into something harmonious and wonderful.

The vision of someone able to almost unconsciously conduct our emotional energy into music originally occurred to me when I listened to such extraordinary songwriters as Bob Dylan or Irving Berlin, musicians who create songs so elemental it seems strange to think of them as being written. Not being musical in the slightest, the creation of melodic sound is a miracle to me, and it was nice to find that image for the young composer. Whatever is happening around him, Leo responds: emotion, sound…and especially, women.

Visit Mariah Fredericks's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Girl in the Park.

The Page 69 Test: A Death of No Importance.

My Book, The Movie: Death of an American Beauty.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Pretty Things"

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, This Is Where We Live, and Pretty Things.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Pretty Things and reported the following:

Page 69 of Pretty Things is interesting because it introduces one of the pivotal minor characters in the book - Benny Liebling, whose high school relationship with our protagonist Nina triggers a cascade of events that culminate in the main story of Pretty Things.

Adult Nina is a con artist, who uses social media to target rich kids on Instagram, with the intention of ripping them off. She needs to pull off one last audacious heist order to pay for her mother’s exorbitant cancer treatments. This leads her to Vanessa Liebling, the older sister of her childhood love Benny — a woman who happens to be the heiress to the Liebling family fortune.

The story of Benny and teenage Nina is the emotional heart of Pretty Things, a story of love and misunderstanding and class disparity that really underpins the actions of adult Nina. And on Page 69, we meet Benny for the first time:

Benjamin—Benny—Liebling was the only other kid at the school who didn’t clearly fit into the Academy’s outdoorsy vision of the world. He’d recently moved into town from San Francisco, I heard; his family was rich; they owned some fancy mansion on the West Shore. Kids whispered that he’d been kicked out of a much more exclusive prep school, and that’s why he’d ended up here. He stood out, with his flaming orange hair and his long, articulated limbs; a pale giraffe ducking awkwardly through the doors. Like me, he arrived on campus with a foreign aura clinging to him, although in his case it was wealth, not the urban stench of Las Vegas. His t-shirts were always pressed and spotless; his sunglasses had an unmistakable Gucci logo on the earpiece that he’d failed to disguise with duct tape. Every morning he unfolded himself from the passenger seat of his mother’s gold Land Rover and dashed to the front door of the school as if he thought his speed might make him invisible. Everyone noticed anyway, because how could you not notice a six-foot-two kid with hair the color of a jack-o’-lantern?

Page 69 is in Chapter 7, which takes the reader 13 years back to the past, where they watch the story of Benny and Nina’s relationship play out. Out of this chapter, the bulk of the action of the rest of the book will launch: Nina and her grifter boyfriend Lachlan are about to arrive at Stonehaven, the vast Liebling estate on the shores of Lake Tahoe, where an unwitting Vanessa is about to have her life turned upside down. And it all comes back to this awkward boy, and a lovesick teenage girl.

Learn more about the book and author at Janelle Brown's website.

The Page 69 Test: All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.

The Page 69 Test: Watch Me Disappear.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Lightness of Hands"

Jeff Garvin is an author, podcaster, and musician. His debut novel, Symptoms of Being Human, is an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and garnered starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly. His sophomore book, The Lightness of Hands, received a starred review from School Library Journal and praise from multiple New York Times bestselling authors. Garvin also produces and cohosts The Hero’s Journey podcast, examining books and films through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth paradigm.

He applied the Page 69 Test to The Lightness of Hands and reported the following:

From page 69:

“Don’t disappear,” he said.

I didn’t know how to reply.

I climbed the steps of the RV, closed the door behind me, and looked around. I had lived in this box half my life, but suddenly it was too small. The box, my life, everything. I felt smothered. Claustrophobic. I had an impulse to rush back outside and tell Liam to stay. I could make coffee. We could sit at the picnic table and just talk. Stretch the night out a little longer.

I took a step toward the door, but then I heard the Mustang’s engine revving and saw the tail lights retreat as Liam drove away. I turned and started down the aisle.

Dad was waiting up for me, sitting at the table and pretending to read. He looked up and smiled as I approached, but his eyes were already inspecting me for signs of whatever dads feared they would find after a date.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Good,” I said. “I’m really tired.”

Dad raised his eyebrows. “I promise not to interrogate you. But you’ve got to give me more than that.”

I sighed. “He’s really great, Dad. A total gentleman.” A total gentleman I would probably never see again.

“That’s wonderful.”

Dad’s smile was too bright somehow, like a flashlight in the eyes. I looked away, irritated.

“Did you see a movie?” he asked.

“Dad, I’m tired.” I wanted to be alone. I tried to walk past him, but he took my arm gently in his hand.

“Ellie, what’s the matter?”

The page sixty-nine test isn’t particularly effective for my book. The Lightness of Hands is the story or 16-year-old Ellie Dante, who must battle her bipolar II disorder in order to resurrect her sick father’s ruined magic career. While the narration and dialogue on page sixty-nine do serve to develop Ellie’s character and her relationship with her father, they don’t provide the kind of first impression I would want readers to have.

On page sixty-nine, we get only a hint that magic is involved in the story, and it’s through a bad joke that Ellie’ love interest, Liam, makes: “Don’t disappear.” We do, however, get a sense of Ellie’s living and family situation, and both are crucial to the story. Ellie lives with her aging father in a small RV; she has little space and no privacy, which puts a strain on their already difficult relationship. Because the two of them travel constantly, performing at bars and backyard parties to make ends meet, Ellie has difficulty forming relationships with people her own age, like Liam, a boy she went to high school with and has recently run into again. She longs to escape her cloistered life with Dad and get out into the world. It’s a microcosm of the teenager’s need to leave the nest, complicated here by the small space and Ellie’s isolation.

Also missing is any clear element of Ellie’s largest obstacle: bipolar II disorder. Of course, the psychology of bipolar II can be subtle, and its on-the-page effects invisible, but given the self-awareness with which Ellie is blessed (cursed?), page sixty-nine is not representative of how the depressed valleys and hypomanic peaks affect the extraordinary way Ellie sees the world, and therefore, how we see Ellie.

Visit Jeff Garvin's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"To Have and to Hoax"

Martha Waters was born and raised in sunny South Florida and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her lifelong love of England and romantic comedies inspired the writing of To Have and to Hoax, which is her first novel.

Waters applied the Page 69 Test to To Have and to Hoax and reported the following:

From page 69:

Violet’s plan was proving to be more complicated than she had anticipated.

“Of course it is,” Diana said impatiently the next day as she, Violet, and Emily reclined in Diana’s barouche outside Gunter’s. “I do believe my exact words to you were, ‘Have you lost your mind?’”

“And I assured you that I had done no such thing,” Violet said, pausing to take a bite of her ice.

On page 69 of To Have and to Hoax, my heroine, Violet, has just realized that the plan she’s come up with to get even with her estranged husband – faking a case of consumption – is rather more difficult to pull off than she anticipated, something her friends have already predicted. Honestly, I’m astonished at how well this test works for my book, because this short snippet of the book really sums up the entire plot – Violet and her husband, James, getting ensnared in an increasingly complicated battle of one-upsmanship, even as they fall back in love with each other – and their long-suffering friends along for the journey, telling them to just have a conversation with each other instead! At the bottom of page 69, Violet – realizing she’s going to need to really commit to her plan if she wants to fool her husband – asks:

“Do you think your physician would be willing to lie to the son of a duke?”

This gives the first indication for readers that things are about to get very complicated – and increasingly silly – for Violet and James, and I think it really functions well as a glimpse into what the rest of the book will offer.

Visit Martha Waters's website.

Writers Read: Martha Waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sin Eater"

Megan Campisi is a playwright, novelist, and teacher. Her plays have performed in China, France, and the United States. She has been a forest ranger, sous-chef in Paris, and a physical theater specialist around the world. She attended Yale University and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. In 2019 she received a Fulbright Specialist award to travel to Turkey and give master classes at Tatbikat Theatre. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Campisi lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Sin Eater, and reported the following:

From page 69:

…The Queen herself sits not four paces from us. “The sin eater stopped. Is it a portent?” she asks the Willow Tree.

The Willow Tree talks louder than he should, but more like because he’s unaware, than that he means to be loud. “I saw no such signs. Perhaps she trembles at the gravity of the sin.”

The Queen signals her black-fingered secretary. He goes to the front of the Makerhall. The Willow Tree hastily follows after as if he doesn’t want to be left out. They talk a bit as if they’re arguing. The secretary’s hands move as he speaks, and his black fingertips look like charred tinder. I swallow away the giggle that comes into my throat.

Black Fingers addresses the hall. “The sin eater will proceed with the Eating of Corliss Ashton as is the sin eater’s duty, conferred by the Maker and his agent on earth, Her Majesty, Queen Bethany.”

The Sin Eater doesn’t move.

I know it’s the deer heart. She vowed to eat the sins Corliss recited. The deer heart is a lie. She won’t break her vow. I feel like a squirrel seeing the shadow of a hawk. I dread what’s coming for us.

Black Fingers waits one more breath and then speaks. “If the sin eater refuses to eat, she disobeys a direct order from the Maker as it is written in the Maker’s Book.” Every breath in every body stills. As if following my thoughts, he goes on. “To disobey a direct order from the Maker and his agent Queen Bethany”—his own voice quiets—“is treason.”

Treason is death. And under Queen Bethany that’s not by a noose and the gallows but by gutting or burning or worse. I wait for the Sin Eater to move. When she doesn’t, I do something plain foolish. I take my hand and place it on hers.

Page 69 of Sin Eater is right in the heart of the plot, a critical moment that changes the course of May's (the main character) life. It's a great introduction to the book because it's central to both the character's emotional journey and the story's mystery.

As a sin eater, 14-year-old May Owens becomes a pariah in her own community. But as the novel progresses, she turns this curse into an unexpected source of power. She uncovers a series of murders that reach all the way to the queen and sets out to solve them using her untouchable status. It’s a story about an isolated young woman finding her strength and also finding her people.

May’s journey is about finding home—with all its connotations of comfort, sanctuary and identity. But she doesn’t just do this out in the world, she also finds a home within herself. I wanted to chart an individual revolution in the way one woman views herself and her situation—a seemingly isolated act of rebellion in an unjust world. Change starts at home, with yourself, and grows from there. Even if we aren’t queens, we can still make profound change in how we live our lives.

Visit Megan Campisi's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Easy Part of Impossible"

Sarah Tomp is the author of YA novels The Easy Part of Impossible and My Best Everything; and a picture book, Red, White, and Blue Good-bye.

Tomp has a MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She teaches creative writing for University of California San Diego Extension.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The Easy Part of Impossible and reported the following:

I think Page 69 of The Easy Part of Impossible gives a good peek into the essence of my main character, Ria's emotional struggle.

Once, when she'd been trying to finish her homework at the dry gym in between sets he'd (Benny) said to her, "There's more than one kind of intelligence, Victorious. Don't you worry that pen-and-paper stuff isn't yours. There's not going to be tests and science reports in real life."

It had made her feel better at the time. And for a long time afterward. But now here she was at the start of senior year, with nowhere to go. The void ahead, otherwise known as her future was too big, too exhausting, too much nothing to fill.

"She's going to call soon. You need to at least talk to her."

"I can't," Ria started, but then Mom's phone rang and they all jumped, startled. She stared at it, like it might explode. Dad shoved it in her hand.

For more than half her life, seventeen year old Ria has been under the control of her diving coach, Benny. He's her biggest supporter - the person who knows her best, and who cares as much about her diving as she does. But, he's also an abuser. Her parents don't realize he's hurt her physically. They only know he recently kicked her off the team and now they're suggesting she talk with a college coach. As someone who has always struggled in school, Ria has no interest in this plan of theirs. Her reaction to the phone here - that it might explode - is a subtle hint to the fact that she's suffering from PTSD.

So, yes, I think this page gives a good picture of the emotional story line. What's missing is the spelunking! This scene takes place after she's gone caving with her friend Cotton for the first time. There, in the dark she felt a different kind of thrill - and fear - than she's used to. That's also the start of a slow burn romance with an atypical love interest.

Visit Sarah Tomp's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Prettiest"

Brigit Young, born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has published poetry and short fiction in numerous literary journals. She is a proud graduate of the City College of New York, and has taught creative writing to kids of all ages in settings ranging from workshops at Writopia Lab to bedsides at a pediatric hospital. Young is the author of the middle grade novels Worth a Thousand Words and The Prettiest. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughters.

Young applied the Page 69 Test to The Prettiest and reported the following:

The Page 69 test works perfectly for The Prettiest, the story of how an anonymously written list of “the prettiest” girls in the eighth grade affects three girls.

In this section of the text, Eve, a shy girl shocked and disturbed by her ranking as number one on the list, slips out of a parent/student meeting in which the grown-ups’ discussion devolves into arguing. As she runs off through the halls, looking for a spot to hide, she hears a boy calling out to her, but is “done hearing from boys right then.” Eve makes an escape into the choir room, but– unbeknownst to her – the popular and vindictive Sophie Kane has also hidden there after a day of bullying due to her unexpected ranking at number two. Sophie believes she should be number one and that Eve wrote the list herself.

“Who do you think you are?” Sophie calls out to Eve.

This moment embodies many of the emotional themes of the book. These girls are terrified, bewildered, and constantly questioning who they are as they navigate the expectations and summations of others. Further, they feel they must separate from the adults who purport to help them and the boys who gaze at them and figure out the answer to that question for themselves.

Visit Brigit Young's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Last Bathing Beauty"

Amy Sue Nathan is the author of Left to Chance, The Glass Wives, and The Good Neighbor.

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

This experiment amazed me. The Last Bathing Beauty is written in two timelines crossing seventy years, so I thought perhaps that one page would illuminate one timeline or the other, but not both.

I was wrong.

Page 69 is the seedling of the love story that is the crux of the book in both timelines. This is when the main character spends time with her first love and you know it's a good thing going on. Page 69 is the relationship kick-off, per se, and would give a reader a good sense of where things headed in 1951 and then, it actually mirrors the emotions and backs up the intensity of the emotions in the present.

Amazing!

Learn more about the book and author at Amy Sue Nathan's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Amy Sue Nathan & Mitzi and Lizzie.

--Marshal Zeringue