Goddess Fish Promotions Presents
The Unveiling of Polly Forrest
by Charlotte Whitney
A randomly drawn winner will receive a $50 Amazon/BN GC – Enter Below
Rural Michigan, 1934.
During the throes of the Great Depression Polly marries for money. After her husband Sam dies in a bizarre farm accident, new bride Polly assumes she is set to pursue her dream of opening a hat-making business. Instead, she becomes the prime suspect in Sam’s murder. Secrets abound and even Polly’s family can’t figure out the truth.
Sunday, August 19, 1934
Having no choice, I began climbing the exterior ladder that ran up the height of the silo. I got up five or six rungs before my fear of heights kicked in. My body started shaking and I willed myself not to look down. I kept putting one foot above the other. The towel around my wounded right arm had loosened and I let it fall to the ground, not wanting to remove my other hand from the rung.
Every step required my mind telling my arms and legs to move. My hands were jittering and I could hardly grip the ladder. You can do this, I told myself. You can. You can.
“Keep going.” His voice was piercing.
I willed my feet to move up the ladder. My body convulsed. I was about five rungs from the top when I stopped. Reason told me I needed to quit shaking and get my body under control or I would fall. Then it occurred to me. He’s not going to push me into the soft silage. He’s going to knock me off the top of the ladder down to the hard earth.
Q: Who designed your book cover?
A: Rena Violet of Violet Designs created the incredible cover for The Unveiling of Polly Forrest. But the cover design didn’t simply come out of her head. I first looked at all the best sellers that most closely resembled my manuscript and examined their covers and made copies of about six or eight for Rena. When you study book covers you find some commonalities that readers, either consciously or unconsciously identify with your genre. In my case it is historical fiction of the not-too-distant past. I noticed large blocks of color with a subdued landscape, which, not surprisingly, ended up in my design. After that you need to find colors that identify the mood of your book and go well on the shelf next to your most recent books. From there you need to suggest some design elements. In my case it was the two farms separated by a hill. The mauve colored clouds overhead suggest a darkness, a mystery which is brewing. The sunlight in the middle hints at a glimmer of hope. The silo next to the barn is prominent as a couple of important scenes play out in it. If you look closely you’ll see a dog on the left side hill. He, too, plays an important role in the story. Because of all these elements the cover design process is a long one, with several iterations playing out before the final version is accepted. I couldn’t have been happier with my designer. She was prompt and had a keen eye for detail and making small changes.
Q: If your publisher offered to fly you anywhere in the world to do research for an upcoming book, where would you go?
A: Oh, tough choices here. Perhaps Luxor and the Pyramids on the Nile in Egypt. Or Marrakesh in Morocco amidst the royal palaces and gardens and world famous marketplace (souk). Likewise, it would be fun to write an Agatha Christie type mystery set on a river cruise in Europe. The possibilities here are endless as I love to both travel and to write.
Q: If we were to come to your house for a meal, what would you give us to eat?
A: The food would be Mediterranean, for sure. I’ve visited Greece, Turkey, Israel and Palestine, and I love the cuisine. It’s so fresh, healthy, and delicious. I’d make a red lentil soup with Middle Eastern seasonings. Then I’d have a large fattoush salad with an assortment of olives. This would be accompanied by falafel, stuffed grape leaves, and sides of hummus and baba ganoush with giant pita hot from a stone oven. (No, I don’t own a large stone oven, so I’m dreaming now.) I’d serve some fresh fruit for dessert and perhaps some baklava. I could make this meal easily because we have a large Middle Eastern market nearby as well as one of the best Mediterranean restaurants just down the street.
Q: Describe your best fan letter ever.
A: It was from a ninety-six year old woman who was a friend of my mother’s. She told me how she had loaned her copy of Threads to all her friends and that every single one of them loved it. She said that a couple of her friends had said that I shouldn’t write her letters, so that I could spend all my time writing my next book instead of letters to her. (I continued to write her letters). I had given her a copy of the book so I didn’t make a cent from her or any of her friends, but even now tears come to my eyes when I think about her letters praising my work. Sadly, she died of Covid a few weeks ago.
Charlotte Whitney is the author of historical fiction set during the Great Depression in the rural Midwest. Her most recent work, The Unveiling of Polly Forrest, a stand-alone historical mystery follows her groundbreaking novel, Threads A Depression-Era Tale, which was met with both critical acclaim and commercial success. Raised on a farm in southern Michigan, she often She received a master’s degree in English at the University of Michigan, and after a short stint of teaching at two community colleges, worked at the University of Michigan where she was an associate director of the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts. Currently living in Arizona with her husband and two dogs she enjoys hiking, bicycling, swimming, and yoga.
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