Suzanne Strempek Shea makes a "wish" for her readers

PRIME – October 2014 By Debbie Gardner debbieg@thereminder.com

Suzanne Strempek Shea celebrates 20 years of writing with release of her latest novel

When Suzanne Strempek Shea published her first novel, “Selling the Lite of Heaven,” in 1994, she had no clue she was starting down a path that would lead to a 20-year career as a celebrated local author. “I wrote that book and really thought that would be it,” Strempek Shea told PRIME during an interview about her sixth work of fiction –“Make a Wish, But Not for Money,” which debuts this month. She vividly recalled visiting the Broadside Bookstore in Northampton when “Selling the Lite of Heaven” was released, and how her mother had snapped a photo of her and her husband, Tom Shea, gazing at a display of her book through the shop’s window “sort-of like you would look at an infant.” Her thoughts at the time – “This is never going to happen again, so I’m going to enjoy it all,” Strempek Shea said. Five novels, five works of nonfiction and countless blog posts, essays and magazine pieces later, the Baypath University Writer in Residence – and director of the university’s Creative Writing Program – is almost a household name in Western Massachusetts. “It kept happening, and that was all thanks to readers and bookshops,” Strempek Shea said modestly. “Make A Wish, But Not for Money,” is her return to fiction after an eight-year hiatus into non-fiction that saw her chronicle her brush with breast cancer; record her time working in a bookstore; share her exploration of faith in America; co-write the history of the Sisters of Providence; and explore a family tragedy that led to a clinic in Malawi, Africa. “I’m always writing fiction,” Strempek Shea, winner of the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work’s contribution to the region, said. “I’ve got two [more] books going right now, one is about half done.” She noted that like those yet-to-be finished works, “Make A Wish” had been cooking “for awhile,” but “other projects took precedence because of deadlines or contracts.” Strempek Shea said the idea for “Make A Wish” – which chronicles what happens to out-of-work bank teller Rosie Pilch when she assumes the palm reading job of her friend, “Irene, Queen of the Unseen” at a dying mall – actually came during a trip to New York City’s East Village more than 10 years ago. “I walked by an empty storefront and there was a sign on the sidewalk – a sandwich board – and it said ‘palm readings $10,’” she recalled. “I joked, ‘What can you get in New York for $10?’” Strempek Shea said she went in, put out her hand – the palm reader asked for her $10 up front, of course – and “she looked at my hand and said, ‘Make a wish, but not for money.’ “Right then I said, if nothing else happens here, I have the title for another book,” she added. “And wouldn’t it be fun to write about a palm reader.” When she began to turn that “wouldn’t it be fun” idea into an actual novel, Strempek Shea said the economic climate influenced how she saw her main character. “Because of the situation with finances, and so many people in job situations I thought I’d put her in an unemployed category and make this job a way for her to get back out of her house and back working,” she said. Making her protagonist a palm reader proved a bit of a challenge, however. “It was nothing I knew anything about,” Strempek Shea admitted. “So I was learning as she was learning.” Books on palm reading became her recreational reading as she tried to learn the ins and outs of Pilch’s new trade, sometimes with unexpected results. For example, one day while she was skimming a palm reading book in the prescription waiting area at a CVS, an older lady sitting next to her “threw her hand on the book and said, ‘How long am I going to live?’” Strempek Shea said. “I said, ‘I don’t know, but we can look it up.’” She added the palm reading research also led to her staring at her own hand, and other people’s hands, trying to divine what the lines meant. Finding a setting for her new novel was a bit easier. “She takes a job in a dying mall – not unlike the one in Hadley, which people called ‘the dead mall’ which was a very empty mall in the end,” Strempek Shea said, adding that spot is now the site of the Bed & Bath and Barnes & Noble. “I used to go through it to go to the movies. The water wheel would be creaking and there would be eerie music – kind of old music coming through the speakers, and I thought it would be fun to put her in a place like that.” Strempek Shea said Pilch slowly finds she has an aptitude for palm reading, and people start coming to the mall to see her, which also brings business to the mall’s other shop owners, who have become her community. “She comes back to life, the mall comes back to life and in a twist at the end, something else comes back to life,” Strempek Shea said, trying not to give away too much of her plot. In essence, Strempek Shea said “Make A Wish” is a story about getting out of your comfort zone and taking a chance after hitting one of life’s bumps. “Everyone knows someone who has been in that situation, if they haven’t been in it themselves,” She added about her main character’s job dilemma. And “It was a lot of fun to write,” she added. This novel now behind her, Strempek Shea said she’s made a commitment to herself – and her loyal fiction fans – to complete those other novels that have been simmering, too. “I never do an outline, I never know what is coming,” she said of her fiction writing style. “I have one or two lines and an idea [and] I write every day.”