©2023 Vanessa Lind (P)2023 Vanessa LindTwo women. One chance to get it right....
“This town has stories,” Jo’s mother tells her. “You’re the one to tell them.”Now her mother is gone, and Jo blames herself.
In the Gilded Age boomtown of Astoria, Oregon, Jo sets out to prove herself as a girl reporter. Following the trail of a missing maid, she finds her newspaper’s publisher dead. Left in charge of the paper, she discovers danger is a lot closer than she thinks.
In present-day Astoria, Olivia is running from her failures. The more she tries to control her life, the more it gets away from her. Now she’s got a bookshop she never wanted, and an offer that will turn the town against her. Jo's unfinished Gilded Age story could be the one thing she gets right, if only she can make the pieces fit. Is Jo’s secret the key to her redemption?
It’s always pretty cool to get to tell someone I live in Astoria, Oregon. It’s really cool when I can pop in a DVD from the ’80s or ’90s like Short Circuit or Kindergarten Cop and point out the street I used to live on, or the school where my daughter went until third grade. But it’s a whole different level of cool when I get to narrate a book set in Astoria, written by an Astorian.
Local author Deb Vanasse reached out after reading an article about my voice acting in The Astorian newspaper. She moved to the Oregon Coast from Alaska several years ago and has written close to 20 books, the latest being the Tidewater Chronicles series under her pen name Vanessa Lind. It’s a dual timeline historical mystery series set in Gilded Age and present-day Astoria. Her two heroines are struggling to find their places in worlds 135 years apart, but they share a resilience and independence that I enjoyed bringing to life. Plus, Deb’s descriptions of familiar Astoria buildings and landmarks made it a cinch to put myself in the story!