"Becoming George Sand"

Rosalind Brackenbury is the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and five books of poetry.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Becoming George Sand, and reported the following:

Page 69 of my book Becoming George Sand is actually a pivotal moment, where my present-day characters Maria and Edward are arriving in Soller, Majorca and settling down to have lunch together in a restaurant; the reader already knows what Edward only suspects, that Maria is having an affair with someone else. Together, away from home, they are finding a fragile peace which will soon be broken.

Learn more about the book and author at Rosalind Brackenbury's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Sticky Fingers"

Nancy Martin, winner of the Lifetime Achievement award for mystery writing from RT Book Reviews, is the author of Foxy Roxy (originally published as Our Lady of Immaculate Deception) and the bestselling Blackbird Sisters mysteries. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Martin applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Sticky Fingers, and reported the following:

On page 69 of my new Roxy Abruzzo mystery, I took some time to illustrate a necessary character in all mystery novels—the sidekick. Ever since Dr. Watson knocked on the door of that famous Baker Street address, detectives have needed a listening ear—a character who hears the clever reasoning and interprets the actions of the protagonist. He’s a sounding board who helps the reader understand the mystery as it unfolds, but he’s also a mirror held up to reflect qualities and themes back on the main character.

Roxy Abruzzo, a tough Pittsburgh girl “with a heart of black and gold,” spends her days with Nooch, a simple sort of man who’s been her friend since high school. She protected him from bullies then, and now that he’s her employee, she protects him from bigger threats. But, an innocent soul, Nooch also keeps Roxy on the straight and narrow when her natural inclination is to break rules. Although they’d never say so, they love each other. Yet their days are full of conflict, bickering and long-running jokes.

This relationship is one that keeps Roxy grounded. But it also illustrates the bond between longtime friends in a tight-knit, ethnic neighborhood. Pittsburgh is a patchwork of such neighborhoods—it’s perhaps my favorite thing about the city--and writing about Nooch and Roxy gives me a chance to explore that world. The themes of friendship and caretaking and loyalty are best illustrated by the way these two characters interact.

Page 69 of Sticky Fingers:

But it was Nooch who pushed through the Crabtree gate.

I expelled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Where have you been?”

Nooch halted in his tracks in the act of muffling a yawn with one hand. “In the truck, like you said.”

“Didn’t Clarice Crabtree tell you I wanted you downstairs?”

“Who?”

“The lady who came out of the house a few minutes ago.”

“Nobody told me nothing.”

I glanced over at the driveway. Clarice’s car was still parked where she’d left it. The interior lights were on. Nobody sitting inside. I could hear the bing-bing-bing of a key in the ignition, though. I headed over to the car.

“What’s going on?” Nooch ambled after me.

I reached the station wagon and peered inside. No Clarice. But the keys dangled from the ignition, and the car kept binging. I leaned in the open door to get a better look and saw her purse half hidden under the seat. Careful not to touch anything else, I snagged it off the floor.

“What are you doing?” Nooch asked. “Jeez, you’re not purse-snatching, are you?”

“I’m checking her stuff. You fell asleep, didn’t you?”

“Aw, Rox, don’t yell at me. I started visualizing a nice plate of gnocchi, but I must have dozed off for a couple of minutes, that’s all, and—What are you doing?”

I had already pulled my cell phone from the hip pocket of my jeans. “I’m calling the cops.”

Nooch’s eyes bulged. “All I did was fall asleep!”

The first squad car arrived in less than three minutes. In half an hour, the street was crowded with cops and their vehicles. I guess it was a slow night for crime fighting. After the initial rush, Bug Duffy finally showed up.

Read an excerpt from Sticky Fingers, and learn more about the book and author at Nancy Martin's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Our Lady of Immaculate Deception.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Toward You"

Jim Krusoe is the author of the novels Erased, Girl Factory, and Iceland. His stories and poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Bomb, the Chicago Review, the Denver Quarterly, the American Poetry Review, and other publications. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Toward You, and reported the following:

Ah, page sixty-nine!—not even a whole page but more like a half—and it’s the tail end of a chapter at that. Yet curiously, though not much seems to be happening, it’s also just could be the tipping point of the entire novel.

On this page Bob, the protagonist, gives an extra coat of shellac to the Communicator, a device he has constructed out of egg cartons, which he hopes will enable him to listen to dead people. Actually, The Communicator is the culmination of a vision he had long ago, when he was still a student at the Mind/Body Institute, and dating Yvonne, and finally he’s sure he’s on the right track. When the device perfected, Bob is sure he’ll become a millionaire and win Yvonne back again.

So the helmet rests there on some old newspapers spread over the floor to make sure that spatters from the shellac don’t mess things up and, as Bob waits for the helmet to dry, he makes himself an omelet. (He’s got about fifteen dozen eggs he needs to use up after buying all those cartons to construct his invention) While he eats, he watches a show on the Nature Channel, his favorite fare.

This particular program is about starfish and Bob wonders, in between bites, if the starfishes’ missing limbs can remember their old bodies. For that matter, are each of us ourselves like limbs that have been severed from some larger, other self? Hmm. Deep thoughts in the middle of the day for Bob, but little does he know that lying there beneath the slowly drying Communicator, printed in the very newspaper he’s laid out to keep things clean, is an article that will give a new and tragic urgency to his quest.

Bob will discover it in just a couple of more pages—let’s say on page seventy-three—to be exact.

Read reviews and excerpts, and learn more about Toward You at the publisher's website.

The Page 69 Test: Girl Factory.

The Page 69 Test: Erased.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Badger’s Revenge"

Larry D. Sweazy's first western, The Rattlesnake Season, a Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger novel, was released by Berkley Books in 2009. Book #2 in the Josiah Wolfe series, The Scorpion Trail, followed in 2010. Book #3, The Badger's Revenge, will be released on April 05, 2011, and Book #4, The Cougar's Prey, will be released in October, 2011.

Sweazy applied the Page 69 Test to The Badger's Revenge and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Badger’s Revenge finds Josiah Wolfe hiding in a barn, after escaping from two bounty hunters. He’s been taken into a town where the sheriff and his men are nothing but outlaws themselves, and Josiah is not sure that he can trust the woman, Billie Webb, whose barn he’d sought refuge in. Whether she turns Josiah in or not determines whether he will live or die. But Billie may have her own reasons for keeping Josiah safe. She needs help. Her husband is dead, recently killed by another outlaw, and she’s nine months pregnant, about to give birth.

Page 69 excerpt:

The man was Liam O’Reilly, there was no mistaking that. His hat had fallen back off his head, held by the string around his neck. His thick red hair glistened, soaked with rain but still bright as a redbird strutting around in full breeding feathers, trying to entice a female. O’Reilly’s hair was as tousled as the girl’s, and he looked like he’d been riding all night. His clothes were muddy, and the other feature that stuck out to Josiah from his position, hiding in the hay mound—where the girl had instructed him to go just moments before the riders arrived—was that O’Reilly didn’t wear a badge now, while the other two men did.

“Morning, Billie,” the man in the lead said.

He sat comfortably on a black stallion. The man was wearing a tall black Stetson, a black vest with a five-point star pinned to it, muddy riding boots, and a slicker opened up over his shoulders.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“We’re looking for a man.”

“Figured as much. That Ranger?”

Josiah stiffened. He still wasn’t sure if he could trust the girl—Billie, he figured, since that was what the sheriff had called her. But she’d told him to hide, and hide he had. He had no choice. Running was out of the question.

Watch the trailer for The Badger’s Revenge, and learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Albuquerque Turkey"

John Vorhaus is the author of The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even if You’re Not. An avid poker player, he has written several books on that subject, including the bestselling Killer Poker series and the poker-world novel Under the Gun. A veteran creative consultant, he has taught writing in twenty-four countries on four continents, most recently running the writing staff of the Russian version of Married ... with Children.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel The Albuquerque Turkey and reported the following:

I had a friend who read sitcom spec scripts for a living. Her draconian practice was to read one page of a script at random, and ask three questions. 1) Do I get a laugh, or at least a good, solid smile? 2) Do I get a sense of the story? 3) Do I have a reason to turn the page.

Tough test, that one. Draconian, yeah. I wonder how (this part of) page 69 of my comic-mystery, The Albuquerque Turkey, stands up:

[I] could see in Allie’s face that she knew this was coming, expected it, approved on some level, and yet didn’t entirely like it. It was weird. The part of her enamored of Woody couldn’t dismiss a death threat out of hand. Other parts of her no doubt feared buying into his play, for that’s a move no grifter loves, running someone else’s script. Plus there was the elephant in the living room of whether I was merely looking for an excuse to go off the reservation.

How did I know she had these thoughts? Because I had them, too, exactly. I’ve always said that the trick of reading people’s minds is just reading your own. Ninety percent of everything everybody thinks is the same stuff. Which means if I was worried, Allie was worried, not just about Woody but also about me. About us. “Look,” I said, “I honestly don’t know if Woody’s in trouble or just dragging me into something ugly, but I can’t find out from here. So I just need to know that you believe I’m doing all this for the right reasons, and not because I can’t hang straight.”

Allie wrapped her arms around my neck. “Radar Hoverlander,” she said, “you’ve never hung straight in your life.” Was that an endorsement? I couldn’t tell.

Do I get a laugh or a good solid smile? I suppose the line about Radar not hanging straight qualifies, but I think you need to know the characters better to know for sure.

Do I get a sense of the story? Well, yeah. It’s Radar and Allie against Woody, whoever Woody is, plus Radar against his own crooked demons.

Do I have a reason to turn the page? Again, yeah, but that’s only because I know that page 70 contains the immortal line, “Parsing public records is a bit like reading tea leaves; you think you’re reading, but maybe you’re just reading in.” Will others be likewise motivated? I can only hope.

Really, though, what else can a writer do but hope?

I think a fairer test would be to read chapter one. If you dig one, read two. If you enjoy two, read three. And so on. Around here we have a saying, “If you’re doing something and you can’t stop doing it, keep on doing it.” That seems to be as good a rationale as anything for reading page 69 or, indeed, any page at all.

Read an excerpt from The Albuquerque Turkey, and learn more about the book and author at John Vorhaus's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"You Can Make Him Like You"

Ben Tanzer is the author of the books Lucky Man, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine, Repetition Patterns and 99 Problems. He also oversees day-to-day operations of This Zine Will Change Your Life.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel You Can Make Him Like You and reported the following:

"Liz looks at me. She wants to believe, she wants to not think of me as that kind of guy, the guy who stays up all night talking to the hot chick from his past, who might not be willing or able to truly to do anything, but is willing to embarrass his wife and a marriage she holds sacred, by playing along."
--An excerpt from page 69 of You Can Make Him Like You.

The question is whether or not Page 69 of my new novel You Can Make Him Like You is representative of the rest of the book and would someone skimming that page read on? In terms of the latter question I am contractually obligated to tell you that of course they would read on, You Can Make Him Like You is like a magnet, or more accurately the Death Star, though a good literary kind of Death Star, drawing you in to a magical world where everything everywhere else but the world you've been drawn in to ceases to momentarily exist.

There are no contractual anythings related to the former question, however, just hard data and facts, and the data tells me that yes, Page 69 is reflective of the book overall, or more generally anyway one of the kernels that the book's foundation is built on, some males, maybe many males, and females as well, desire, need, something, to test just how far they will let themselves wander outside the confines of their marriage without allowing themselves to break the marriage itself.

A desire that only seems to be further highlighted, or maybe it's illuminated, no magnified, when it comes to people from our past who we sort of feel like just kind of got away, but maybe represent what might have been or could be, a theme only further exaggerated in real life by high school reunions and, or, if you prefer this new invention you may have heard of called the internet, though maybe more specifically, this thing called Facebook, you may also have heard of, where anyone you've ever met, talked to or may have smiled at you are a couple of keystrokes away.

I should add here, strike that, I am also contractually obligated to add here, that while this is one of the foundational themes of this truly engrossing book, there's more, so much more, it's also an homage to the music of The Hold Steady, pop culture as common vernacular, Obama's presidential campaign, Ray Bradbury, interns, because really where would be without them, breast feeding classes, and a serious debate, well serious may be strong, but a debate none-the-less about not only whether U2 or REM is the true super group of the late eighties and early nineties, but whether you are even allowed to engage in this debate if you or anyone you know has ever listened to Hootie and The Blowfish.

As I said it's like the Death Star. A good one. Enjoy.

Read an excerpt from You Can Make Him Like You, and learn more about the book and author at the official website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Skipping a Beat"

Sarah Pekkanen is the author of The Opposite of Me and Skipping a Beat. Her work has been published in People, The Washington Post, USA Today, The New Republic, The Baltimore Sun, Reader's Digest, and Washingtonian, among others. She writes a monthly Erma Bombeck type column for Bethesda Magazine, and has been an on-air contributor to NPR and E! Entertainment's "Gossip Show." She is the winner of a Dateline award and the Paul Miller Reporting Fellowship.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Skipping a Beat and reported the following:

Page 69 of Skipping a Beat is representative of the rest of the book in some ways, but not in others. Although my novel is about the marriage of Julia and Michael Dunhill, it weaves in many scenes from their pasts, starting in high school, which is when Julia and Michael - then simply Julie and Mike - first met. They both came from broken families, and page 69 of Skipping a Beat reveals a flashback to Julia's childhood. It's darker than many of the other passages of my novel (which the Washington Post just called "Intelligent, engaging... and delightful" yay!) And yet, in a way, it shows how Julia was shaped. It's a kind of building block of her character - a scene that explains many of her actions in the book.

Skipping a Beat opens with a crisis. Julia's incredibly wealthy husband, Michael, has just collapsed at the head of the table in his company's boardroom. He is revived four minutes and eight seconds later - but he's a different man. He now wants to give away all of their wealth, and change the unspoken rules of their marriage. Julia has three weeks to decide whether to stay with him or leave and begin a new life without Michael. Page 69 explains her choices, in some way. It informs her actions. It's a piece of an important scene, but one that probably isn't the best representative example of the book.

Read an excerpt from Skipping a Beat, and learn more about the book and author at Sarah Pekkanen's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"You Know Who You Are"

Ben Dolnick grew up outside of Washington, D.C., and currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife. He is the author of a novel, Zoology, and his work has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times and Five Chapters.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, You Know Who You Are, and reported the following:

Page 69 of my book comes smack in the middle of a chapter in which the main character, Jacob Vine, is learning to navigate the social waters of his new school. He’s in seventh grade, standing in the courtyard of a Maryland movie theater with the girl he likes, watching the couples around him with nervous fascination.

Somehow everyone in the courtyard had come to believe that a kiss ought to last as long as possible. A couple would stand at the center of a circle and kiss, their arms encircling each other’s waists, their mouths in greedy sloppy motion. Friends would stand and count, sometimes with a watch in hand. When the couple finally pulled apart, their mouths glistening, their eyes glassy and relieved, the timekeeper — often it would be a tiny boy, someone who’d seen that he couldn’t be a romantic protagonist himself and so had turned himself into an elf, a mascot, willing to be dropped into trash cans or pushed into swimming pools — would race around the courtyard announcing, ‘Thirty-two seconds! Pete and Ellen just went for thirty-two seconds!’

Each chapter in the book covers a different period in Jacob’s life (ending when he’s in his mid-twenties), and middle-school was probably the era that was most painful, in the revisiting.

Read an excerpt from You Know Who You Are, and learn more about the book and author at Ben Dolnick's website.

The Page 69 Test: Ben Dolnick's Zoology.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Paris Wife"

Paula McLain received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She is the author of two collections of poetry, as well as a memoir, Like Family, and a first novel, A Ticket to Ride.

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

Page 69 of The Paris Wife is representative of the whole, and very much hooked in to one of the principal tensions of the book. In it, Ernest and Hadley Hemingway are newly married. It’s 1921, Chicago, and Hadley is witnessing a major depressive episode in Ernest for the first time. Worried, she begins to wonder about the nature of his sadness, how deep it goes, and where it comes from, and if there’s any way she can truly help him through it. The situation is further attenuated by Hadley’s history: her father committed suicide when she was thirteen.

Here’s an excerpt. Note, when Ernest talks about being “shot up,” he’s referring to his trench mortar wound in WWI….

Hours later, Ernest woke up and called out for me through darkened room.

“I’m here,” I said, going to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I get like this sometimes, but I don’t want you to think you’re getting a bum horse in the deal.”

“What sets it off?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, it just comes.”

I lay down quietly next to him and stroked his forehead lightly as he talked.

“When I got shot up, I had it pretty rough for a while. If it was daytime and I was doing something, fishing or working, anything, I was okay. Or at night, if I had a light on and could think about something else until I fell asleep. If I could name all the rivers I’d ever seen. Or I’d map out a city I’d lived in before, and try to remember all the streets and the good bars and people I met there and things they’d said. But other times it was too dark and too quiet, and I’d start to remember things I didn’t want in my head at all. Do you know how that is?”

“I do a little, yes.” I held him tightly. “It scares me, though. I never knew my father was so unhappy, but then he was gone. It all got to be too much for him.” I paused, trying to get this part right. “Do you think you’ll know when it’s too much for you? Before it’s too late, I mean.”

“Do you want a promise?”

“Can you?”

Read an excerpt from The Paris Wife, and learn more about the author and her work at Paula McLain's website.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"Nude Walker"

Bathsheba Monk is the author of Now You See It ... Stories from Cokesville, PA.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Nude Walker, her new novel, and reported the following:

On page 69 of Nude Walker, Duck Wolinsky has waylaid Max Asad, his rival for the affections of Kat Warren-Bineki. Duck says he wants Max to teach him backgammon, but he really wants to find out what the attraction between Kat and Max is all about. Duck thinks that if he can find a chink in Max’s armor he can make Kat lose interest in him. But that’s not how love works, is it?

Read an excerpt from Nude Walker, and learn more about the book and author at Bathsheba Monk's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Aftertime"

Sophie Littlefield's crime novels include A Bad Day for Sorry and A Bad Day for Pretty.

She applied the Page 69 Test to Aftertime, the first installment in her new dystopian series, and reported the following:

By this point in the book, main character Cass Dollar has woken up in a field, filthy and dressed in unfamiliar clothes, with half her hair pulled out and the flesh torn from her back, evidence she’s been attacked by a cannibalistic Beater. She makes her way to a shelter where citizens make do with few resources, and a communal bath in a trough of creek water is the best anyone can do for washing. The women at the bath show Cass the kindness of including her without comment on her appearance, even though Cass is embarrassed by the dirt she leaves in the water.

Nance made a show of pretending to look into the trough. “Can’t even tell,” she said. “We’ll be able to wash all the kids and a few stray dogs in here, too.”

I included this scene to show two things: first of all, a hunger for community is unquenchable, even in the direst circumstances, and friendships are possible even when everything is gone. And second, assaults on our dignity that would devastate us in the world we know – like sharing dirty bath water – become meaningless when necessity dictates that we make do.

I was remembering a visit to a loved one in a nursing home when I wrote that scene. Conventions of dignity are lost in the interest of helping the frail in as efficient a manner as possible. And yet humanity prevails, and the best caregivers talk and encourage and share laughter even as they provide care for the failing. I like to think that, no matter what we our faced with, our essential natures prevail.

Read an excerpt from Aftertime, and learn more about the book and author at Sophie Littlefield's website and blog.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

"So Close the Hand of Death"

J.T. Ellison is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, The Cold Room, and The Immortals.

She applied the Page 69 Test to So Close the Hand of Death, the sixth book in the series, and reported the following:

Page 69 of So Close the Hand of Death is from the point of view of a crime blogger who is the first to realize something dreadful is happening all across the country. Colleen Keck is her name, and the blog is called FelonE. Colleen is a vital character to the story, the vehicle through which multiple plot points are tied. She popped onto the screen nearly unannounced, in an early draft, and I didn’t know the who, what or where about her. But as I got to know Colleen, a single mother whose cop husband was killed in the line of duty, I realized how important she was. Colleen holds all the keys, and if Taylor can put aside her own vengeful path for a moment, she’d see that.

In this scene, Colleen has just heard about a shooting in North Carolina, and the memories of her past and hurtled to the surface. She’s overwhelmed, but so strong, and so resourceful, that she’s able to pull herself together. I like Colleen’s character a great deal, admire her strength and resilience to go on after she’s lost her husband. She truly is the lynchpin to the story. And in a fun twist, she was named for an auction winner, so I am doubly grateful to the real Colleen Keck for allowing me such incredible license with her name.

"Update, there are seven officers involved in two separate shootings. We have a total of seven down. We need extra personnel, my location. Send out a BOLO on a black Lincoln Town Car, North Carolina plate, state owned, numbers to come. Suspects are armed and dangerous, repeat, armed and dangerous. Last seen heading west on Highway 64. Put roadblocks in place all the way out to 95. Switch to channel eighteen, code three, code three. Switching channels now." The scanner went dead. They'd switched to a private channel to avoid people like her. It wouldn't have mattered if the voice had continued, she wasn't hearing anything but the roaring in her own ears.

Oh, my God.

Colleen's breath came short, and she gagged a little, unable to resist a brief glimpse into her own hell after hearing the words officers down. Seven cops hurt in the line of duty. Seven families torn apart. Seven.

The memories assailed her anew, and she barely made it to the bathroom in time. She vomited in the sink, tears mingling with sudden beads of sweat that popped up on her forehead.

Oh, Tommy. Why did you have to leave me? Why did you have to be so freaking brave?

After a few minutes, her cries died down, and she gathered herself. She rinsed her mouth out with cool water, splashed some on her face, which managed to smear her already desiccated day-old mascara even further. She swiped furiously at the dark smears with a bit of toilet paper. Weakness was not allowed.

Learn more about the book and author at J.T. Ellison's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: the Taylor Jackson series.

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

--Marshal Zeringue