I did not intend to write a Young Adult book when I started The Talking Table, but as the words came and the story evolved, there it was. I was a bit mystified and a little torn, but I told myself why not. And not so secretly, I still hope the story, its characters, and setting will appeal to Adult readers.
The story is told by Vivien Winslow, who wants to be reunited with her father Graham Winslow, a troubled man who became famous for the first and only book he published, For Keeps. She is 15. The year is 1967. The settings are Boston and a fictional town in Massachusetts called Seaview.
It’s been a struggle financially for Vivien’s mother Anne, who decided several years ago to leave her husband in Boston and move back to her hometown with their son, Gray, and Vivien. Although she still loves their father, she could no longer count on him. Summers, Anne works long hours at Woody’s, a seafood take-out place near the beach, to support them.
Graham Winslow has kept writing but feels none of the books is the same quality as his first. He has felt unbearable pressure from those wanting more from him. The last time Vivien saw her father was when he surprised them a year ago. The phone letters and phone calls stopped months ago.
Despite the hardship, Vivien hasn’t stopped loving her father. She wants the family to be reunited, and that happens in an unexpected way after she makes friends with a girl, Lucy, who moves to Seaview. The girl’s family has a special and unlikely friend who helps guide Vivien. Lucy’s arrival is another blessing as Vivien is one of those high school girls who doesn’t fit in with any group. She’s smart, a good reader and writer. She has a fun relationship with her older brother, who is on the verge of adulthood.
So, why the title, The Talking Table? Ah, that’s a big secret for now. But the inspiration came from a real-life experience I had.
I am 64,000 words into this book. Vivien and I have arrived at a crucial scene, which now consumes much of my free thinking these days. I expect to complete a solid draft over the next few weeks.
For now, I will share the opening paragraph to The Talking Table.
We lived in an ugly home, my mother, brother, and me. It wasn’t really a house, but something that came on wheels just like the other ones in Murphy’s Trailer Park and only a single-wide with white aluminum siding. It was like living in a tin can. We moved there because my mother couldn’t afford anywhere else. We had a yard although what we had wasn’t saying much, just a shabby lawn about the size of my mother’s Ford station wagon, mostly weeds, with a pile of junk the people who used to rent this trailer didn’t take with them. We rented it from Mr. Murphy, who owned the trailer park and didn’t seem to care all that much whether this junk was still here. Before we moved, Mr. Murphy told my mother he would take care of it, but so far, he hadn’t. My mother said maybe we could get Uncle Brad, her brother, to haul everything to the dump. But we had been there two months, just before school let out for the summer, and the tires, car battery, and metal pieces were still where we found them. Anyway, all that junk and the weeds growing around it are what I saw as I sat on the front step because it was too hot already inside our trailer even with all of the windows open. The fan we owned didn’t do much to make it cooler. My mother, brother, and I used to live in a nicer place, the bottom floor of a triple-decker tenement, but after Mom got behind on the rent, we had to move since there was no way she would ever catch up. My father didn’t live with us. He hadn’t in a long time, and it was our mystery how he was doing. So, now it was just the three of us.
So that’s the start. If you are interested in reading any of my other books, here’s the link on Amazon. Thanks if you do.
The photo above? A scene from a beach on the National Seashore on Cape Cod I shot this summer.