Books: "Upstate" By Kim van Alkemade

 

Upstate

By Kim van Alkemade

William Morrow; paperback, 416 pages; $19.99

Kim van Alkemade is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has been translated into eleven languages. She had a career teaching writing at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, and now works at an independent bookstore in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she lives with her partner, their rescue dog, and two feisty backyward chickens. 

Upstate is van Alkemade's fourth novel, and it is the story of a grieving writer who seeks to revive an abandoned bookshop in upstate New York, only to find hidden letters that reveal the previous owner's untold love story. 

It is an outgrowth of van Alkemade nearly buying a bookstore in that area during the pandemic. She writes, "In the summer of 2021, my partner showed me an article in an online literary magazine titled, 'If You Dream of Owning a Bookstore, Here's Your Chance." Beneath that enticing headline was a fairytale picture of a red barn in a green field with the word BOOKS spelled out in jigsawed letters above the doorway. I can't say that either of us had ever dreamed of owning a bookstore, but after a year in lockdown questioning everything about our careers and life choices, we were yearning for  a change. The barn looked pretty good and the shop was located a scenic hour's drive away, so we thought, why not take a look?

"The property was bucolic, the barn full of books movie-set charming, the 1800s farmhouse that came with a renovator's dream. We fell in love with the story of the bookstore's two female founders, 'longtime companions' who'd started a business and built a life for themselves at a time when being lesbian was reason enough to be fired from a job, diagnosed as mentally ill, or even thrown in jail. The prospect of carrying on their legacy felt to us like destiny. Within days, we made an offer which was accepted. We were heartbroken when, a few weeks later, the contract fell through."

Upstate is centered on Audrey Beacon, a thirty-four-year-old writer who is grieving the loss of her husband alone in lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York shows up in her social media feed as a sort of lifeline.

Audrey cashes out her life savings, packs up her possessions in her dead husband's van, and leaves Manhattan for the village of Schuywich, determined to outrun the ghosts of her past.

Amidst Audrey's reviving the shop, she discovers letters from the 1950s between the previous owner, a magazine writer named Evelyn Cabot, and a local librarian, Hazel McIntyre. It was love at first sight when they met at a summer camp in Maine that made a discreet promise of a "different vacation for professional women."

The letters came to an abrupt end in 2015 when they were forced to abandon the bookshop. This leaves Audrey with having to find the courage to heal the wounds of the past, including her own.

This "big-hearted tapestry of a novel," which also tells a parallel story of the previous bookstore owners, is an ode to booksellers and a celebration of community, and produces a very enriching story.

A Q&A with Kim van Alkemade (provided by William Morrow):

Your previous novels, including your New York Times bestseller Orphan 8, are works of historical fiction. The events of Upstate, though, take place much more recently. What inspired you to write a story set so close to the present day? I do love historical fiction! Upstate is my fourth novel, but it's the first one I've written in which the internet exists and characters can text one another. The inspiration came in 2021 when my partner and I very nearly bought a bookstore in a barn in upstate New York. Although the purchase didn't work out, that experience, along with the larger phenomena of city people moving upstate in the early years of the pandemic, became the initial spark for the novel. I haven't completely turned my back on historical fiction, though. In Upstate, I link past and present by interweaving a timeline about two lesbians who start a bookshop in the 1960s with another about a writer who buys their shop in 2020 and is changed by what she learns about their legacy. It was important for me to populate the contemporary story with characters drawn from the true history of upstate New York, from queer people whose stories have been hidden to Black pioneers who established farms in the Adirondacks well before the Civil War. The novel follows this diverse cast of characters across multiple generations as they process grief, move toward healing, and find ways to support one another in community.

As you mention, there is this historical thread that sneaks into the novel, and into Audrey's life. Without giving too much away, can you say a little bit about how Evelyn Cabot and her column "A Woman's Place" made their way into the book? The idea was initially inspired by Barbara Probst, a writer for Mademoiselle in the 1950s who really did open a bookstore in her barn in upstate New York. In the novel, Evelyn Cabot's popular column, "A Woman's Place," begins in 1956 and chronicles her accomplishments renovating an old house, her adventures as a shepherdess, and her success as an entrepreneur at a time when women were expected to become wives and mothers. As a closeted lesbian, though, Evelyn necessarily left much about her life unspoken. It's only when her published works are read alongside the intimate letters written by her partner, Hazel McIntyre, that their true love story is revealed.

In addition to being a novelist, you're also a bookseller at Northshire Bookstore in Saratoga Springs. How has your experience there shaped Red Barn Books, the absolutely dreamy novel at the heart of the novel? In 1955, George Hecht, a manager at Doubleday Book Shop, wrote: "By no means do I wish to tell anyone without bookshop experience to open a bookshop. In fact, I strongly urge the inexperienced person to get some practical experience first by working for a bookseller." I guess you could say I took his advice, except instead of opening a bookshop I wrote a novel about one! The story I imagined, Red Barn Books, is dreamy, isn't it? That's the beauty of fiction; I'm sure the nitty-gritty of making a living selling used books is far less magical. Being a bookseller myself helped me understand the challenges Evelyn and Hazel faced when starting a business in 1968, as well as Audrey Beacons's experience of reopening the abandoned shop in 2020 when online sales and social media are critical to making a profit. Working at Northshire has also taught me hot much a bookstore means to a community. It there's magic in Red Barn Books, it comes from the people who shop there, the stories they share, and the writers who've scattered their words like breadcrumbs across the decades just waiting to be found.

While Audrey is building a new life, she's also mourning several losses. When creating her character, how did you balance her past and her future? The death of Audrey's husband early in the pandemic is the driving force behind her impulsive decision to flee New York City and isolate herself among the dusty shelves in Red Barn Books. While Upstate is ultimately about healing, the narrative thread running through the novel touches on the many ways people deal with loss. When we first meet Audrey, she's grieving her husband, but she's lost her parents, too: her father to cancer while she was in graduate school and her mother to suicide when she was ten years old. For Audrey's heart to be open to human connection and even love in the future, she has to excavate all that buried trauma and process it in the present. Found family and community are important to her healing journey, but what I didn't realize when I started the novel is how much of my own experience of losing a parent to suicide I would end up incorporating into her character. Sharing that vulnerability has made Upstate my most personal novel yet.

After a career as an English professor in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, you now live in Saratoga Springs. How has your move to New York informed the world you create in the novel? I was born in Manhattan but never lived in New York State until I moved to Saratoga Springs. It makes me happy that, for the first time in my life, my birth certificate and my driver's license match! Growing up in New Jersey, I spent lots of time in the city over the years, from trips to the Museum of Natural History with my mom to visiting my dad at work on the 57th floor of the Empire State Building. I still remember sitting on the radiator in his office and looking down (through a securely locked window!) at all the tiny people below.

My first three novels are all connected to New York City, from the orphanage on 138th Street in Harlem that inspired Orphan #8, to the Broadway theaters at the heart of Bachelor Girl, to the Midtown locations so important to Counting Lost Stars. Moving to Saratoga Springs shifted my focus to the lush landscapes and historic villages north of Albany. We're used to thinking of urban and rural as being opposites, but in upstate New York, there's an interplay between City and country that enriches both. In the novel, Audrey Beacon's decision to leave Manhattan to buy Red Barn Books mirrors Evelyn Cabot's journey from Greenwich Village to Schuywich, both of which contrast Hazel McIntyre's choice to stay in the place where she was born. In Upstate, the train that connects the fictional village I imagined to the metropolis of New York City symbolizes how people from different backgrounds and circumstances find ways to come together in community.