Our Kindle Nation eBook of the Day is a novel of humor, warmth, Christmas tree farming, dressing up like it was 1904, and selling your small town to a theme park conglomerate.
by Jacqueline T. Lynch: |
| Party like its 1904, in Nuthatch |
A publicity stunt to attract tourists to a small dying town (population 63), results in the entire community turning the clock back to 1904. It is local Christmas tree farmer Everett Campbell’s idea, after watching the film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” his young daughter’s new favorite movie. What begins as half practical joke and half desperate ploy initiates the rebirth of Nuthatch, Massachusetts. Tourists do come, along with the media. Everett’s resentful teenaged son rebels at living in the pretend past. His wife, a medical transcriptionist who works at home, a self-employed and self-professed loner, has panic attacks when tourists stop to take her picture. The town’s unofficial historian, a genteel septuagenarian, supports Everett’s scheme, but for personal gain.
To Everett’s dismay, his campaign to save their community results in also attracting representatives of a chain of theme parks who want to buy Nuthatch 1904. Everett now stands to lose his town in a way he never imagined, and the community is divided on which alternate future to choose. On the sidelines but ever encroaching toward the center is a local drug dealer, the longtime enemy of Everett and his best friend Bud, who discovers a new opportunity to threaten them and exploit the town, or its new owner.
Jacqueline T. Lynch’s articles and short fiction have appeared in regional and national publications, including the anthology “60 Seconds to Shine: 161 Monologues from Literature” (Smith & Kraus, 2007), “North & South”, “Civil War Magazine”, “History Magazine.” Several of her plays have been published by Eldridge Publishing, Brooklyn Publishers, and Dramatic Publishing Company, one of which has been translated into Dutch and produced in the Netherlands.
She has never actually been to Nuthatch, but is planning a trip there as soon as they fix the potholes.
And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample: