Disclaimer: The Page 69 Test is not mine. It has been around since 2007, asking authors to compare page 69 against the meat of the actual story it is a part of. I loved the whole idea of it and so I'm stealing it specifically to showcase small press titles - novels, novellas, short story collections, the works! So until the founder of The Page 69 Test calls a cease and desist, let's do this thing....
Set up page 69 for us
The novel is narrated in the form of a memoir by Jeremy Hilary Jones as an adult trying to come to terms with traumatic events of his childhood involving his younger sister, Ursula, or Ursie for short. This page begins Chapter 10, which is about one-fourth through the novel, and follows an episode detailing the kids’ father’s infidelity. The father had taken Jeremy and Ursie “on the road” with him as a traveling salesman throughout Ohio, using them as cute, little props (at ages 8 and 4) to help convince brides-to-be to place his assortment of fine china on their bridal registry. For a week, they had been living out of their car and washing up at gas station restrooms or roadside rest stops, so when a single woman, Evita, whose husband had recently died, invites them to stay for supper and a clean bed, all three jump at the chance. That night, Jeremy and Ursie hear what sounds like two adults “jumping on the bed,” like the monkeys out of the storybook. They’re too young to know about sex, of course, but after their father ships them back home on a bus so he can stay with the young woman, they blurt out her name, violating their pledge of secrecy. This chapter opens with the notion that “all is forgiven” upon their father’s return home.
What Ursula Major is about
Set in small-town Appalachia, Ursula Major recounts the efforts Jeremy makes to keep his younger sister “safe” through the tumultuous 70s and early 80s as their parents’ marriage slowly falls apart. Throughout this time period, brother and sister navigate the perils of their youth together, escaping one predicament only to end up in another one even worse. Part of their problem is their irresponsible parents: a deadbeat father who eventually abandons the family for a life of adventure in Alaska, and a mother who has “found religion,” including a snake-handling sect across the Ohio River in West Virginia that the children find both enchanting and threatening. Small, seemingly insignificant episodes, a couple of which involve charitable hospice and prison visits where their mother leaves her kids to their own devices, start to add up in a cause-effect relationship. Events take on more sinister tones, from Ursie’s abduction by a family acquaintance to the sexual assault on their caregiver by an entitled teen. Through it all, Jeremy adopts a positive outlook, trying his best to spin hopefulness out of danger and despair. What gives the novel a psychological edge is that the episodes are framed by the adult Jeremy trying to make sense of his past as he separates fact from fantasy with the guidance of a Millennial therapist who attempts to keep him grounded in reality.
Do you think this page gives our readers an
accurate sense of what the book is about? Does it align itself the book’s
theme?
Yes, I think this page provides a good sense of the novel’s themes in several ways. First is the theme of forgiveness. At the top of page 69, it may seem “all is forgiven” regarding the father’s transgressions, but within a couple of pages, hidden tensions are on the verge of exploding. These occur during such seemingly docile activities as family game nights, where Jeremy and Ursie’s mother accuses their father of cheating, even during Scrabble, as they assault each other with vicious four-letter words. The reference to the “hedge” is how the father takes out his anger by clipping the bushes that border their front yard little by little until nothing is left but a series of short sticks. The idea of forgiveness crops up again as the mother’s spirituality leads her to forgive her daughter’s kidnapper. And it’s clear that Jeremy, by the end of the novel, is seeking forgiveness for the guilt he feels at not having been able to prevent traumatic events that were out of his control. The mother’s attempt to curb the father’s roaming instincts will come to naught, as he will begin roaming farther and farther afield, leaving his family behind. This sense of abandonment and estrangement is another dominant theme in the novel. Jeremy’s nerdiness and day-dreaminess are also a recurring motif, as he Is bullied quite often, especially as he enters his gangly, awkward teens. Yet he tends to put on a happy face, even during the most notorious encounters, turning tables on his tormentors with gentlemanly politeness. The unfinished line at the end of the page hints at the room he shares with his sister. Yet it isn’t just a room but a life, as the hardships they endure as kids, which ultimately prompt them to plot revenge against their caregiver’s assailant, lead to a lifelong bond.
Chapter 10
All was forgiven—or seemed to be. In any case, nothing more was ever said of Evita.
Our father began working second shift in a manufacturing plant as a furnace operator. Our mother thought it best that he work somewhere stationary, as a means of curbing his instinct to roam. It helped that he was supervised at work and had to stay in one place. Their battles seemed fewer. At least, it was too cold for Dad to work on the hedge.
I couldn’t imagine what a furnace operator actually did, since it seemed our furnace worked automatically, with minor adjustments to a thermostat. When I asked my father, he wasn’t very forthcoming. “Turn knobs and watch a dial,” is all I was able to get from him as a job description. It didn’t sound very exciting.
My sister still had one more year to go before kindergarten while I attended third grade. At lunch, I sat with a couple of outcast classmates in the cafeteria—we were what you might refer to as a larval stage of nerd—but rarely spoke with anyone or raised my hand in class. I preferred to doodle in the margins of my notebook or stare out the window at a small courtyard of snow-covered benches beneath the prickly arms of hawthorns. Birds stayed alive eating the berries, and my doodles turned into comic strips with crudely drawn robins that had missed the fall migration.
My main interaction with kids on the bus was as a scapegoat for ear flicking from the seat behind. There was a girl—Melinda Ruiz—who sat next to me until the older kids made fun of us and tried to force our heads together into a kiss. After that, she changed seats and never sat next to me again.
My refuge was at home in the small bedroom I shared with
His stories have appeared in Blue Moon Literary & Art Review, THAT Literary Magazine, and Kestrel, as well as various ezines. With a teaching background in language and literature, he has also co-authored a college composition textbook to help emerging writers connect with their world. His first two novels placed as back-to-back suspense-genre finalists in the National Indie Excellence® Awards. In a different medium, he is determined to keep posting original cartoons to his Tumblr blog until his followers beg him to stop.
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