How the Story Goes by Andrew Forrester
Andrew Forrester has made a fine impression with his debut novel, How the Story Goes, a charming, upbeat literary romance set in the small fictional town of Whelk Harbor, Massachusetts. The two primary characters, Whit Longacre and Merritt Pryor, are similarly broken-hearted, despondent and in desperate need of finding purpose, renewed hope and their former zest for writing.
Whit is a grieving widower caring for Annie, his bright and utterly charming eight-year-old daughter who desperately misses her mother. His wife, Helen Albright Longacre, New England’s version of J.K. Rowling, had written the Greenwood Castle Saga, an international blockbuster sensation children’s fantasy series that earned millions. A single unpublished handwritten short story of hers, gifted to a charity auction, sold for one million dollars to a private collector.
When Writers Lose Their Way
Her complex storylines are populated with many characters and fanciful creatures so well received they have spawned an entire merchandising line and vast numbers of followers on social media. Four of the planned five-volume series had been published before Helen’s lifetime was cut short by undetected final-stage cancer. Along with rights, royalties, social media and control of her considerable estate, her will specifies that husband Will is to write Volume 5. The one-year deadline specified by her publishers is mere months away, but as yet, he has been unable to commit a single word to paper. Not that Will is lacking in talent; he has achieved moderate success with a mystery series featuring a detective nun as protagonist. Even though the task had been entrusted to him with love and confidence, he feels incapable of accomplishing this looming monumental duty made even more insurmountable by his secretly held lack of interest in the genre.
Merritt Pryor was a gifted writer who brought huge, starry-eyed dreams with her to Texas after accepting a creative writing MFA program fellowship taught and mentored by Graydon Lyons, whose literary fiction was unusually both critically lauded and bestselling. Separated from his wife and two adult daughters, this handsome literary lion habitually selected a promising young student to share his limelight and bed for a semester, or perhaps two. Initially delighted to be his arm candy for glittering literary events, Merritt was crushed when he demeaned her ambition to write children’s books. Disillusioned, she stopped writing, broke off the relationship and returned home to New England to stay with her widowed mother. She is horrified when a friend from the same MFA program informs her that vengeful Graydon is about to publish Serious Games, a tantalizing, thinly disguised roman à clef: a novel about their brief relationship that is already garnering rave reviews. Merritt is coping but is appalled when local journalist and writer for The Atlantic Ian Hoult guesses she is the graduate student in the novel and is interested in outing her in an interview for the magazine.
A Ghostwriting Partnership Sparks New Hope
Despite its size, Whelk Harbor is home to several successful published authors and many avid readers. The community boasts a fine library, at least two thriving bookstores and several book clubs. Merritt’s mother is the much-admired head librarian Kathleen Pryor, who promptly hires her as a substitute librarian and suggests a job at Goodenough Books. At the library, Whit and Merritt have a meet-cute where he encounters her ‘bottoms-up’ attempting to extract a stuck, oversized book from the return drop. He’s brought an inscribed first edition of Volume 1 of his wife’s book as a gift for her mother, nearly causing superfan Merritt to swoon. Noticing she is wearing a Greenwood Castle merchandising kestrel pin prompts him to inquire about her thoughts on the series. Stunned by her detailed knowledge, Whit reveals his writing predicament and offers her a generous contract to ghostwrite the final volume.
The writing commences and progresses well in the enormous renovated stone and wood lodge Whit and Helen had acquired with the advance from her second book. Daughter Annie immediately relates to and likes Merritt. However, as any romance reader knows, everything will fall apart with endless problems and seemingly impossible obstacles to overcome, but you must read Andrew Forrester’s delightful How the Story Goes to discover what develops.
About Andrew Forrester:
Andrew Forrester is a writer and former English teacher whose work has appeared in McSweeney’s and Parents magazine. He holds a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature and lives in Austin, Texas, with his family. How the Story Goes is his first novel.
