Join McIntyre’s Books for Nancy Johnston Hall, Sweet Fields Beyond in conversation with Susan Ketchinr on Sat, May 16, 2pm-3pm. This free event takes place indoors. Free parking is available on-site. The space is wheelchair accessible. No pets allowed. Fearrington Village is part of the Chatham County Craft Beverages & Country Inns Trail. See more events at Fearrington Village.

BOOK SUMMARY

THE YEAR IS 1837. When widow Louisa Evans, with no belongings or purpose, joins her sister and brother-in-law on a 700-mile arduous trek by wagon train from Pennsylvania, she hopes for a fresh start. Their destination is the Black Hawk Purchase, a wild, unsettled expanse along the Mississippi, soon to be called Iowa. And the journey west is only the beginning… When tragedy strikes, Louisa and her brother-in-law, Isaac, must build a farm alone on virgin land, enduring backbreaking labor, shared grief, and impossible moral choices. Through her unflinching journal, Louisa records each trial in a voice both lyrical and candid, a widow’s quiet passage from invisibility toward self-possession.

AUTHOR BIOS

For her first novel, Nancy Johnston Hall chose to write a fictionalized version of her own ancestors’ stories, who were among the first to settle in the Blackhawk Territory—present-day Iowa. An evocative letter passed down in her family from the real Louisa Evans, her great-great-grandmother, inspired the literate, introspective voice of her fictional Louisa’s journal. Because she’s happiest when she’s in her creative zone, Nancy retired reluctantly from her career as an award-winning medical journalist and documentary filmmaker. As co-owner of a health communication company—her dream job—she wrote everything from brochures and books to television PSAs, documentary scripts, billboard slogans, on and on. When she and her husband moved from Minnesota to North Carolina, she found a new form of writing—personal essays. When she ran out of “life” to write about, her writing group suggested she try fiction. Oh my goodness, as her protagonist, Louisa, would say, is she happy she followed their advice? Nancy now lives in the deep woods near Chapel Hill with her husband and has begun a second novel about England and Paris during the 1920 and 30s.

Susan Ketchin is an author, editor, and teacher who lives in Chapel Hill. Author of The Christ-Haunted Landscape: Faith and Doubt in Southern Fiction (University Press of Mississippi), essays, and short fiction, Ketchin has taught creative writing at Duke University and North Carolina State University. She has served as Associate Editor at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, fiction editor at Southern Exposure and DoubleTake Magazines, and fiction and poetry editor of the St. Andrews Review. She is currently an editor with the North Carolina Writers’ Network’s Critique and Editing Service. Ketchin enjoys leading workshops and retreats in creative writing, songwriting, and publishing your works, most recently with the Arts School in Carrboro, NC.