Nelly, the protagonist in Julia Park Tracey\u2019s new novel, \u201cWhoa, Nelly! A Love Story (with Footnotes),\u201d is a single librarian in her 40s living in a small Northern California town whose only real friends are her two cats that she sleeps with.<\/p>\n
She, like Tracey herself, is also eternally fascinated by the \u201cLittle House on the Prairie\u201d series of children\u2019s books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When Nelly is let go from her library gig due to budget cuts, she decides it\u2019s high time to delve into Wilder\u2019s legacy a little deeper and sets out on a train trip to one of Wilder\u2019s homes in De Smet, South Dakota.<\/p>\n
Along the way she discovers that life on the prairie isn\u2019t as romantic as she imagined. She also falls in love for the first time, and by the time she returns home she\u2019s ready to finally confront her overbearing mother.<\/p>\n
Nine-time novelist and former Alameda resident Tracey will discuss Nelly\u2019s adventures at Alameda\u2019s Books Inc. on Jan. 8, when she returns to the island city to discuss her latest book. Because the novel is a \u201cmeta\u201d novel, in essence a novel about a novel, Tracey employed footnotes throughout to help explain the narrative \u2014 a \u201cnovel\u201d approach that she says wasn\u2019t appreciated by publishers she approached after finishing the book in 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wanted it. It was too weird. Fiction doesn\u2019t have footnotes,\u201d says Tracey, who says the device is a way to break up Nelly\u2019s narration and talk directly to the reader.<\/p>\n
\u201cNelly is a know-it-all librarian, so she knows everything. So it\u2019s her breaking her stream of consciousness,\u201d she said in comparing the technique to that used in the 1970s \u201cEllery Queen\u201d TV series in which the lead character would \u201cbreak the fourth wall\u201d to address the audience and ask them what they thought would happen next.<\/p>\n
In the process \u201cthe reader becomes a participant because they\u2019re being addressed directly by the main character,\u201d says Tracey.<\/p>\n
Besides being a \u201cLittle House\u201d fan, another trait that Tracey says she shares with her lead character is a love of train travel. The book was written partly in her then-Alameda apartment and on a train trip with her mother. The pair had flown to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to visit Tracey\u2019s aunt and then traveled on Amtrak to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am writing madly because I\u2019m trying to get this novel done,\u201d she says of her work on the train. \u201cAnd a lot of the stuff that you see that the main character Nelly sees out the window is stuff that happened on the train.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tracey highly recommends train travel for writing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI absolutely love it. It\u2019s very elegant because when you sit in your office and write, you have your walls and maybe you have a window. And when you go to a coffee house, you see who comes in and you see who passes by on the street. But on the train you get to see mountains and buffalo and eagles and beautiful red rock and waterfalls. It\u2019s just like watching a movie. It\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not just of fan of the scenery.<\/p>\n
\u201cDining on the train is amazing. You\u2019re eating on real china and drinking out of champagne flutes,\u201d says Tracey. \u201cIt\u2019s just lovely. It\u2019s absolutely worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Amtrak didn\u2019t sponsor her latest novel, she says holing up on a train to bang out your manuscript is also affordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cA train ticket is not very expensive, so you could easily do a weeklong trip on the train, and that\u2019s your hotel, your food, everything is all there in one place, as long as you get off and stretch your legs periodically. But you can make a self-contained writing retreat on the train, and people do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now living in Grass Valley (about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento) with her husband, Tracey was an Alameda islander from 2000 to 2017. While in town she co-founded the Alameda Sun newspaper and was an editor of Oakland\/Alameda magazine, both of which have since shut down.<\/p>\n
After relocating to a house they owned in Sonoma County and experiencing fires, floods and the traumatic death of their son, Austin, she and her husband, Patrick, at the urging of her daughter, decided to take a look at Nevada City. Tracey says they found it to be \u201ckind of like Sausalito. It\u2019s very touristy, and there\u2019s no place to get your dry cleaning done. Or park.\u201d<\/p>\n
So nearby Grass Valley became their new home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very walkable, and it\u2019s got everything you need for basic living \u2014 several grocery stores, big box stores, little independent grocery stores.\u201d<\/p>\n
The other attraction of Grass Valley was that they could actually afford to buy a fixer-upper Victorian and renovate it \u2014 something that was out of reach in Alameda. Tracey\u2019s Jan. 8 return to Alameda will start at 6:30 p.m. in Books Inc. at 1344 Park St. For details online, visit bit.ly\/44F6oEb<\/a>.<\/p>\n