Chapter 8
The Puget Sound Book Company
101 South Main Street??Seattle, WA 98104
1/2/92
Dear Frida,
Happy New Year! Thanks for the encouragement. I really appreciate it. It’s just hard thinking about starting a new book. I spent over a year writing the last one, and then almost another year on revisions. But you’re right. I’ll never get published if I don’t try again.
So what do I love enough to write a whole novel about it? That’s a good question. I have a bunch of old notebooks in a box in my apartment, and I thought maybe if I looked through them I’d get some ideas. You should see all the notes I found about my Bumpa. When Franny and I were little, he was always telling us stories, and I guess at some point I started writing them down. Like how he went to Shanghai with the Navy in the 1930s. Can you imagine? An eighteen-year-old farm boy all of a sudden walking around China? And he raised my mom. I found a page about how my grandma told me when they got divorced she let him have custody. That kind of thing was unheard of in 1949, but she said she thought losing my mom might kill him, it would break his heart so much.
I really love Bumpa. It seems like he could be an interesting main character. Like someone in a Wallace Stegner novel (I just finished The Big Rock Candy Mountain ). What do you think? I’m not sure because something weird has been happening. Yesterday I sat down to try writing about him, and all of a sudden my throat clenched and my stomach felt like a beehive. It was the same feeling I got the other day at work when Roy asked me how my writing is going. I even felt buzzing behind my eyelids. I had to hide in the coat closet and press my face against the cold wall until I could breathe again. I don’t know what’s happening to me.
Enough about my problems. At least one of our lives is on track. Those foreign correspondents are going to be so impressed by you. I’m on the hunt for more War Journo Dames. Until then I finally chose your next Surprise Me book. Every bookseller is assigned sections to take care of, and perky people get self-help, family, and cooking because none of the Serious Booksellers want them. A few weeks ago a customer asked for Serve It Forth by MFK Fisher. It was our last copy so I had to reorder. When it came in, I devoured it in one sitting. I didn’t know people wrote about food like that or even that people write about food at all. You seem to really like food. I think you’ll be into MFK as much as I am. I’m totally infatuated with the essay called “Borderland” where she describes how she heated tangerines on a radiator. Once you read it let me know if you have a secret food. (By the way, for January I’m trying to hand-sell a hundred copies of Serve It Forth .)
Sincerely,
Kate
P.S. Nice try, but the reason I got hired at the bookstore was because they needed people to wrap books during Christmas, and I worked at a gift-wrapping store in a mall when I was in high school. You should see how nicely I can tie a bow.