What do romance, history, and children’s books have in common? From the offerings at the Shadow Mountain Publishing booth (2248), “strong women” is the theme. With the tagline “LOVE what you Read” on its tablet-size totes and sticker giveaways, Shadow Mountain is excited to share its enthusiasm about its expanded lines of Proper Romance, fall nonfiction that tells the dramas of real women of the Wild West, and a children’s books about an unsung civil rights activist.
When it comes to steampunk, which Ilise Levine, the publisher’s sales and marketing manager describes as stories that “capture the velvet of the romance genre with the sooty, gritty brass of the Industrial Revolution,” Shadow Mountain invites attendees to step up and take a selfie with a blowup of one of the steampunk Proper Romance covers with a gap begging for them to place their face in the spot of the heroine.
Whether steampunk or historical, Shadow Mountain’s romances are called “proper” because they focus on the courtship of its characters in a way that makes them page-turners for adults yet suitable for even a YA reader, says Levine.
In historical romances, Shadow Mountain sprinkles them with literature. Take, for instance, the just released novel Forever and Forever: The Courtship of Henry Longfellow and Fanny Applegate by Josi S. Kilpack, which explores the pursuit by a widowed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of a much younger woman who becomes his wife and muse. It’s getting glowing reviews— a rarity for romance books. Levine says she has received some great feedback from indie booksellers and librarians about the company’s historical romances, which, they say, “break through the traditional parameters of the genre” for readers interested in finding out more about the personal lives of real literary characters. Levine sees great potential for a book like Forever and Forever to inspire readers to seek out Longfellow beyond “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” as well as the work of other romantic poets. Kilpack includes notes at the back of Forever and Forever that explain where she used creative license to fill in the blanks in her literary love story.
Kilpack will be in the Shadow Mountain booth today, 11 a.m.–noon, and tomorrow, 2–3 p.m., to sign copies of Forever and Forever and talk about her next book, The Lady of the Lakes: The True Love Story of Sir Walter Scott (Jan. 2017).
Other titles on Shadow Mountain’s roster of fall titles featuring strong women include Frontier Grit: The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women by Marianne Monson (Sept.) and She Stood for Freedom: The Untold Story of a Civil Rights Hero, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland (Aug.) by her son Loki Mulholland, who also wrote and directed an award-winning documentary about his mother, An Ordinary Hero.
Mulholland was a Southern teenager and the first white person to cross the color line to join the sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Miss. She got arrested and faced death threats. “Her courage was unbelievable,” says Levine. The same could be said for the women in Frontier Grit, who came from all over to settle in the West, one with a tale more outrageous than the next, like the young woman who disguised herself as a man to be a stagecoach driver.
Shadow Mountain is pleased to welcome all strong women to its booth—or those who just like feeling like one by taking a steampunk selfie.
This article appeared in the May 12, 2016 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.
