What The Valley Knows
Heather Christie
Publication date: January 25th 2018
Genres: Romance, Young Adult
Millington Valley is a quintessential small Pennsylvania town: families go back generations. Football rules. Kids drink while adults look the other way. High school is a whirlwind of aspiration and rivalry, friendship and jealousy.
When smart and pretty Molly Hanover moves to town and attracts the attention of the football team’s hero, Wade Thornton—a nice guy with a bad drinking habit—longtime friendships are threatened and a popular cheerleader tries to turn the school against Molly.
The young couple’s future is shattered when Wade, drunk, wrecks his truck and Molly is thrown through the windshield. She wakes from a coma to find her beauty marred and her memory full of holes. As she struggles to heal, she becomes sure that something terrible happened before the accident. And there is somebody in the valley who doesn’t want her to remember.
Interview with Heather Christie
Can you tell us a
little bit about the characters in What The Valley Knows?
What The Valley Knows
is narrated by three alternating points of view. The main character is
seventeen-year-old Molly Hanover who
has reluctantly moved to Millington Valley at the start of her senior year.
She’s smart, pretty, terribly shy, and plays the sousaphone in the marching
band. Molly soon attracts the attention of the football team’s star, Wade Thornton, a good guy with a bad
drinking problem. The third voice belongs to Molly’s mother, Ann Hanover, who is struggling as a
single mother, working two jobs: one as a paralegal during the day and another
as a bartender in the evenings at the local legion.
Can you tell us a
little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the future?
My second book also takes place in the fictional Millington
Valley: a Pennsylvania town, families go back generations. Sports rule. Hunting
is a popular past time. When popular soccer players, Noah and Cooper Rose and
Jacob Rose are involved in a hunting accident that leaves the town drifter
dead, Emily Rose (their sister and friend) must decide if she’ll turn them in
or keep their secret.
How long
would you say it takes you to write a book?
What The Valley Knows took six years. During that time, I
also received my MFA in Creative Writing. Book two is moving much faster as I
now have a little better sense of how to structure a novel and I have more time
because my graduate studies are complete.
What is
your favorite childhood book?
The first book that really made an impression on me was John
Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which I read
when I was sixteen.
If you
could spend the day with one of the characters from What The Valley Knows who
would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you
would go and what you would do.
I’d love to spend a day with Molly Hanover because I’d want
to tell her everything is going to be okay.
What was
the hardest scene from What The Valley Knows to write?
The scene in which Molly was attacked was the hardest scene
to write. It’s painful to make something terrible happen to a character you
love.
What made
you want to become a writer?
I always loved to read and as a teenager I wanted to be an
actress. I graduated with a BA in Literary Studies and became . . . drumroll
please . . . a real estate agent. I sold (and I am still selling) real estate,
but as I got older I missed the creative side of myself. Facing middle age, I
knew I wanted to pursuit the arts and I began writing seriously. Finally, now,
eight years later, I have a published book. Remember, you’re never too old to
being again.
Just for fun
(a Favorite song: Dream Baby
Dream by Bruce Springsteen
(b Favorite book: Station
Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
(c Favorite movie: The Shawshank Redemption
(d Favorite tv show: The Walking Dead
(e Favorite Food: Penne alla Vodka
(f Favorite drink: Hot black tea with honey
(g Favorite website: Goodreads
Thanks so much for visiting with us today!
Author Bio:
Heather Christie grew up in rural Pennsylvania and, at age seventeen, took off for New York City in hopes of becoming a movie star. Flash forward several decades, a couple degrees, a bunch of cats, two kids and one husband later, she's back in Pennsylvania writing her heart out and chasing dreams again. She loves to read, run, drink tea, and make Sunday dinner. Follow her blog at www.HeatherChristieBooks.com and say “hello” on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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