The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate Read Free Book Online Page B

putting in the past week. She knew I was dedicated.
    “All right. Here’s the situation.” She eyeballed the group from behind unfashionably thick glasses with heavy black frames. “I want this one, and I want it bad . I don’t just want on the short list this week. I want on the list. I want agreement on a potential marketing plan, an advance in the low sixes, and some viable thoughts on packaging and placement that I can take to the author’s agent.”
    Across the table, Roger leaned back, angled his body away slightly, hooked an arm over the back of his chair. He wasn’t sure of this acquisition, and it showed. Interesting.
    Mitch didn’t look his way but instead centered her pitch on the three female editors clustered at the end of the table. Also interesting. “I realize at the outset that this one sounds like material that’s been done before   —soldier meets war bride, love triumphs against all odds. But this story is unique, and we are not the only house pursuing it. I have it from the agent that she’s expecting other offers to come in over the next few weeks. Our advantage to the author, as I see it, is that we’re smaller, faster, nimbler. We can put this thing out in nine months and manage a first-rate job of it. What we have to do now is convince George Vida that this one is worth going after, and going after big.”
    “Jump on the bandwagon for whatever project his niece brings to the table next week,” Roger advised casually. “Throw her a little love. He can never resist that. She has him wrapped around her little finger.” Was it my imagination, or did Roger’slip curl a bit on that last one? It was no secret that George Vida was smitten by the talents of his niece and hoped to one day relinquish Vida House into her hands.
    “I disagree. I think we just go right out with it,” Hillary Vecchio offered matter-of-factly, her words as crisp and slick as her appearance   —hair neatly flat-ironed, lipstick perfect, figure a size two, if that. We’d chatted by the coffee credenza a couple times. I liked her. “It’s a good proposal. It’s everything you said it was and more. Nonfiction, but it reads like fiction. I say we bring it up alongside books like Seabiscuit or Truman . If we can convince him that this book has the same potential, he won’t be able to stand not going for it.” She punctuated with a nod, pleased with herself.
    The remaining three members of the team chimed in with ideas, which left me the one voiceless body at the table.
    Of course, Mitch turned my way next. I was hoping she wouldn’t, but it didn’t surprise me. “Ideas? You’ve undoubtedly run into situations like this in the past, given your years in publishing, at much larger houses.” It was hard to say what the emphasis meant   —whether Mitch was trying to espouse my qualifications or backhandedly swat at the fact that I’d missed the memo, despite having cut my teeth at big conglomerates.
    I shifted forward in my seat. “I think there’s a point to be made in the lasting social value of the piece   —the fact that it is not just the story of one man and one woman falling in love; it’s the story of a historical period, an hour of American triumph. A time of sacrifice for the greater good. Yet even amid the nobility of the cause, there are still the smaller human struggles   —love and hate, jealousy and altruism. It wasn’t an easy life for these couples if they chose to marry against Army regulations and cultural prejudices. They faced all sorts of difficulties, even if they did finally make it to the States together.”
    A correlation formed in my mind. The personal side of history had drawn me toward memoirs long before my first editing job. “I remember interviewing a woman from Kobe, Japan, years ago for a journalism class. She married an American soldier after the war and came to Georgia. She’d just found out she was pregnant when she happened to visit a dentist to have a tooth