When an Unreliable Narrator Needs a Little Help

by Deborah Nam-Krane, @dnkboston

It took me almost six years to publish my series The New Pioneers, even though I had four completed novels. Part of my delay was that it takes a number of chances. At its heart, it’s romance with chick lit elements. However, each novel has its own special character to reflect that story’s heroine. Thus far, The Smartest Girl in the Room has explored Emily’s coming-of-age and The Family You Choose has uncovered the dark family secrets that haunted Miranda. Harel. But Jessie Bartolome’s story, The China Doll, is where I’m taking the biggest risk.  While The Family You Choose reveals a secret you didn’t realize was there until the very end, it’s clear from the outset that The China Doll is a mystery with a capital M.

I’m pretty confident my readers can handle the genre-tweak; it’s the main character that made me nervous.

Jessie is the youngest of The New Pioneers’ main characters. She’s eighteen when her story opens,  albeit a worldly (and world-weary) eighteen. An eighteen year old can be responsible for her own narrative, but the question that’s stalked her for several years reaches back to when she was a very young child- and arguably before she was born.  We all know how much fun it is to read from the perspective of an unreliable narrator (Holden Caulfield, we hardly knew ye), but I have a complicated mystery I need to resolve. I want us all to have fun, but I also want to give my readers a big payoff. Jessie needs to tell her story, but she’s going to need help. And because this is a big story that affects many people, she’s going to need a lot of it.

I dropped a number of hints in The Family You Choose, but this deserved more background. Annabelle Hendrickson Abbot could supply the perfect amount of information, but she’s been dead for over twenty years. Worse still, her connection to Jessie is tenuous and an extended presence in her story wouldn’t make narrative sense. However, Annabelle’s perspective needed to be included, so I wrote a short story to do just that. An Engagement answers some questions left over from The Family You Choose and then presents some of its own- all of which will be answered in The China Doll.

Arguably, the best way to counter a hazy memory is with facts. I can’t give away who does that here (but it’s in Chapter 16!), but I can tell you it’s someone who knows how to dig and has been motivated to do so. That motivation is going to beg the question: what is the difference between facts and truth? In my series, that question is personified by Jessie’s older but in some ways just as fragile cousin Richard Hendrickson.

It’s been clear since The Smartest Girl in the Room that Jessie’s spirited temper is in some way related to Richard’s burdens, and in The China Doll we will finally understand the heartbreaking depth of the sacrifices he made as a child to protect the ones he loved. But…Richard’s memories are also those of a child, albeit older, and the opinions he formed as a result might warrant closer inspection. That, or he might find they’re a dangerous blind spot that’s hiding something very important. He’ll get some help from a very unexpected source to do just that, and therein we might begin to find the answer to everyone’s questions.

Does Jessie lose something as a heroine because she needs help piecing together her story? I don’t think so. All things being equal, the agency of a child is diminished compared to that of an adult, and ironically we see that in Richard’s recollections. In the final accounting, this novel and the rest of the series isn’t about what happened to my characters as children but what they can do about it now that they’re adults. I will leave you to decide by the end which cousin has more agency in the present, and which one needs a shake to the shoulders.

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Hypocrisy, half truths and lies…

Sick of being treated like she’s going to break, Jessie Bartolome is back to her old ways and calling everyone on their hypocrisy. Sheesh! One little breakdown and even easygoing Martin Shepard thinks she’s too fragile to handle their age difference. Good thing her older and equally yummy teaching assistant Robert Lester thinks otherwise…right?

After spending so long cleaning up after everyone else, Jessie’s cousin Richard has never had the time to start a life of his own. However had he managed to find his girlfriend Zainab? So what is Richard going to do now that everyone else has grown up? Marry Zainab and start a family? Things have never been that easy for a Hendrickson…just ask his cousin Michael.

Richard’s mother, Lucy, is one of the most powerful women in Boston… so when is she going to put a stop to the blackmail ruthless Alex Sheldon has holding over her for years? And if Richard knows more than he’s letting on, why hasn’t he gone after Alex himself? The question is, how much does he- or anyone else- really know?

Welcome to the Bartolome/Hendrickson family.

The China Doll is Book Three in The New Pioneers series.

Deborah Nam-Krane published The Smartest Girl in the Room and The Family You Choose in 2013.  She just released An Engagement and will be releasing The China Doll at the end of March. She reserves the right to incorporate mystery, politics and history into her romances whenever she sees fit.

While Deborah is active on her blog, Facebook page and Twitter account, the best way to keep in touch is through her mailing list. She only sends out newsletters  to announce new releases- and to give her subscribers special discounts on her work.