Book Your Lunch with Heather Newton February 1, 2011

Discover a fabulous new Western North Carolina author, Heather Newton, and her debut novel, Under the Mercy Trees (HarperCollins, paperback, $13.99, releases 1/1/11), which Tommy Hays calls “a sweet ache of a novel.”

Martin Owenby has lost his way in life. Thirty years ago, he left his hometown of Solace Fork in Western North Carolina to come to New York City, with dreams of becoming a famous writer and leaving the pain and shame of his turbulent past behind him. Now he barely scrapes by editing technical manuals, and his existence revolves around cheap Scotch and weekend flings.

When Martin receives word that his older brother, Leon, has gone missing from the Owenbys’ farm, he must return to Solace Fork to help his family in their search. But going back means facing his past – a past filled with regrets, a past that includes Liza Barnard, the girl whose heart he broke; his family, who never understood him; and his best friend, who has faithfully kept the home fires burning in case Martin ever decided to return.

As the mystery surrounding Leon’s disappearance deepens, so too do the weight and guilt of three decades’ worth of unresolved differences and unspoken feelings. Martin will learn the hard way that home isn’t a bad place to be. Under the Mercy Trees is a novel at once devastating and tender, and the Owenbys’ tale of family, love, and redemption is as soul-warming as it is sorrowful.

About the author:
Heather Newton was born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1963. My father worked for state government and my mother was (is) an author of children’s books. With a writer for a mother, I began creating books of my own as soon as I was old enough to hold a stapler. I’ve included some of those early masterpieces on my Writings page. I’ve become a better writer since then. I have not become a better speller.

When I was a kid, visual art was my thing and I was mainly interested in illustrating books, but by high school I had decided I wanted to write them. I headed off to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh planning to major in writing, but once there discovered a love for History, and also discovered I was too young to have anything interesting to write about. I majored in History and then did what liberal arts majors do when they can’t find a job–I went to law school, at UNC Chapel Hill. I began writing seriously after starting my first legal job in Boston, taking creative writing classes at night and joining my first critique group. When I had paid off my student loans I quit my job and took several months off to travel and write my first novel before settling down near family in Asheville, NC. That first novel wasn’t very good and no one would publish it, but it gave me valuable practice.

In Asheville, a childhood friend introduced me to my future husband, Michael, a nurse. We were married in 1994. I continued to practice law, representing workers in employment disputes and helping writers and artists with small business matters. I also wrote my second novel, a not-very-thrilling legal thriller. It, too, wasn’t good enough to publish, but it was better than the first one–I was making progress. Our daughter Madeleine was born in 1998. Around that time little magazines started to accept my short stories and I began to play with the ideas that would eventually become my third novel, Under The Mercy Trees. When I first started working on it, with an infant and a solo law practice, the writing went very slowly. After my daughter started school the pace picked up.

In 2007–8, my long-time writing group, the Flatiron Writers, won a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council and regional arts councils to publish a short-story anthology, Irons in the Fire: Stories from the Flatiron Writers, which featured several of my stories. The grant also paid for us to set up a website, flatironwriters.com, where I blog about writing and legal issues for writers.

Official Website: http://bookyourlunch.com/