The Scent of a Best Seller

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

Monument Rocks, Gove County, Kansas

THE SCENT OF A BEST-SELLER

“Did the rocks speak to you?” I asked Kansas author Nancy Pickard.

Gove County’s Monument Rocks is the backdrop for Pickard’s new novel, “The Scent of Rain and Lightning.”

“The rocks did speak to me,” Pickard replied via e-mail.

“At first they simply said, ‘Put us in a story.’ Then, over time – because it’s not easy for rocks to speak!—they told me part of the story and let me figure out the rest.

“They formed the foundation of the story—the idea of family and community being the rocks of Jody’s life, and how even rocks can be shaken by cataclysmic, shocking change,” Pickard explained.

As the novel opens, we learn that 26-year-old Jody Linder doesn’t always trust the world to work out in her favor. Jody knows well that tornadoes take lives as do violent men, such as the one who took the life of her father, and presumably her mother, on a stormy night when Jody was 3.

In the first chapter, Jody finds out that the man convicted of killing her father has been unexpectedly released from prison, his sentence commuted. Then we read about the events leading up to that horrible night in 1986.

The story takes place in and around the imaginary small town of Rose in western Kansas. Having grown up in a small town myself, I smiled in recognition when Pickard described the size of Rose in this way:

“… in a town so small she could hear people she knew start their cars in their garages on the other side of Main Street and know if they were late to work.”

And, since my old hometown also has a dramatic stone feature nearby, I could easily relate to how the residents of Rose knew and loved their own set of rocks, and had seen them in every kind of light. They climbed them, went there to find peace of mind, and some searched the ground for things that people had dropped.

In the novel, Pickard changed the name of the stone structures from Monument Rocks to Testament Rocks.

“I never want to write about a real town or county, so it’s important to me to change things around. I wanted to fictionalize the rocks just enough to make them ‘mine,’ so I changed their names, added a few more of them, that kind of thing,” she said.

Pickard writes novels of mystery and suspense. Even though I thought I had this one figured out (I didn’t), I kept spinning the pages as fast as I could read to find out what really happened on that stormy night.

Less than two weeks after the book was released, it hit the New York Times Best-Seller List, coming in at No. 19. Speaking of 19, this is Pickard’s 19th book of fiction. She has also co-authored a non-fiction book about writing.

Pickard was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo. and moved to Kansas when she was 29. Thirty-five years later, she resides in the K.C. metro area – on the Kansas side.

“I fell in love with the Flint Hills the moment I first saw them,” Pickard said, “and my love for them has only grown over the years. Gradually, as I traveled more around the rest of the rural parts of the state, I fell in love with rural Kansas in general.”

Many readers are likely familiar with another Pickard novel. Published in 2006, “The Virgin of Small Plains” is also a small-town mystery and is set in the Flint Hills.

“The Virgin of Small Plains” was the 2009 selection for the Kansas Reads program sponsored by the Kansas Center for the Book. During a three-month period in 2009, Pickard visited 50 libraries in 50 Kansas towns, discussing her book with readers.

Pickard hinted that a future book might also have a Kansas setting, and she’s looking forward to more travels. “(There’s) so much to see in this supposedly boring state. It’s anything but boring to me. It’s pretty wonderful.”

The beauty of Kansas is not a mystery, at least not to the people who live here. And with Pickard’s new book on the best-seller list, readers all over the world will come to know about life on the plains, the smell of a Kansas storm, that scent of rain and lightning.

For more information, check out www.nancypickard.com.

Copyright 2010 ~ Cheryl Unruh

On the shelf at Town Crier Bookstore, Emporia.