Interview with Kristy Woodson Harvey - THE SUMMER OF SONGBIRDS

[00:10] Cindy: Welcome to the award winning Thoughts from a Page podcast. A member of the Evergreen Podcasts Network hosted by me, Cindy Burnett, a voracious reader and book columnist who provide you with casual author conversations and book recommendation episodes, as well as insider information on all of the newest releases that I personally endorse and on the publishing industry in my Behind the Scenes series. With so many books coming out weekly, it can be hard to decide what to read, so I find the best ones and share them with you. For more book recommendations, to find my backlist of interviews, or to check out my Summer Reading Guide for 2023, visit my website@thoughtsfromapage.com. There is also a link to the Summer Reading Guide in the Show Notes. I am thrilled to announce that I have launched a new Patreon level for those interested in accessing even more unique bonus content. My original level, called Page Turners, still includes my popular Early Reads program where patrons have access to monthly early digital reads through NetGalley and exclusive prepublication author chats, as well as monthly bonus episodes and fun surprise content. My new level is entitled Lit Lovers and includes all of the Page Turner's benefits as well as access to my new Traveling Galley program, where patrons have early access to at least three to four new titles a month that are in print galley form and are passed along to other members, a monthly fiction nonfiction pairing episode, a monthly episode containing bonus spoiler filled interviews with three authors and finally Read Alike Requests via email. Lit Lovers can send me a book they loved and I will respond with similar titles. This was such a popular and time consuming add on for me that I am moving it off of my main show. My true love is author conversations, and I want to be able to keep that focus on the show. Today, Kristy Woodson Harvey returns to talk about The Summer of Songbirds. Kristy is a New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including under the Southern Sky, Feels Like Falling, and The Peach Tree Bluff series. Harvey's writing has appeared in Southern Living, Traditional Home, Parade and more. She is the co-founder of the hit web show and podcast Friends & Fiction. I recently launched another Patreon level called Lit Lovers. One of the benefits that I have included for this level is spoiler filled episodes with certain authors whose books I've really loved. Kristy is my first author to do this with, so after the regular episode, we recorded a conversation where we talked all about all sorts of issues that happen in the story that you'll only want to listen to once you've read the book. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome, Kristy. How are you?

[02:43] Kristy: I am great. How are you, Cindy?

[02:46] Cindy: I'm great and I am so glad you're back to chat with me.

[02:49] Kristy: Oh my gosh, me too. I'm so excited. It's not a real book launch until I'm on your podcast.

[02:55] Cindy: Well, I appreciate you saying that. Well, I loved The Summer of Songbirds. I grew up going to camp and then I was a counselor at camp, so this was just so much fun. It really brought me back and I loved that.

[03:06] Kristy: Oh, that's great. I love hearing that. I absolutely love hearing that. I was a camper myself, obviously, so this was just a really fun book to write. So I love getting to hear people's stories about their favorite summer places.

[03:19] Cindy: Yes, I think it brings everybody back.

[03:21] Kristy: Yeah.

[03:22] Cindy: So as we start, will you give me a quick synopsis for The Summer of Songbirds for those that haven't read it yet?

[03:27] Kristy: Absolutely. So The Summer of Songbirds is a story about three best friends who met when they were eight year old campers at Camp Holly Springs, which is a fictional camp in North Carolina, but is based on two real North Carolina camps that I'll tell you a little bit more about later, maybe. But these friends have gotten used to doing each other's hard things, as they call it. They send each other this email every week of things that they do for each other. That is kind of a genius idea in my personal opinion, but something they started doing at camp that has just continued on. And so as this book is opening, they realize that Camp Holly Springs, which is owned by Daphne's Aunt June, is sort of being held together with prayers and duct tape and is in real danger of closing. And so they decide that the hard thing that they're all going to take on together is to try to save this place that they love so much, that meant so much to them. And of course, along the way they run into old flames and old feelings because you got to have some summer romance in the summer book. But at the same time, Daphne is an attorney and she finds out that her best friend, Lanier's fiancé has done something highly illegal. And so she has to decide whether she is going to tell her best friend and probably get disbarred or if she's going to let her walk down the aisle and marry this man, not knowing this big thing about him. But Lanier has a secret of her own that will change the way that Daphne feels about all of this. So really, in essence, I think this book is my love letter to the people and the places who make us who we are. And it is, of course set at a summer camp. But what I'm really hoping is that whether you went to camp or not, this is a book that will make readers think about that place in their life where they just felt free and alive and like the world was just out there waiting for them to grab it.

[05:17] Cindy: Well, I have so many questions and I definitely want to hear about the camps that this camp is based on. But first, you mentioned the idea, which is a genius idea of having a group of friends and you all can just put off your hardest things onto each other. And I'm like, oh, my God, I love this idea. How did you come up with that? And I really need to try to float it with my friends and be like, here we go. This would make our lives so much easier.

[05:40] Kristy: Well, I think it was kind of it's funny because it's kind of like a multipart thing. So one night, my husband and I were just talking about how there are those things in your life that are really hard for you, but they're really easy for other people. Or even like sometimes if you have to send a really hard email or give someone bad news, if someone else would just type it for you and send it, they have no feelings about it at all because they don't care. And we were just talking about how easy life would be if we could all do each other's hard things that were easy for us. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's going in a book. I love that. But I also realized I'm part of a group called Friends & Fiction. It's a weekly web show and podcast with Mary Kate Andrews and Kristen Harmel and Patty Callahan Henry and Mary Alice Monroe is also one of the original founders. And we were on stage in Alabama talking about something completely different last week, and I had this sort of like, aha moment that I was kind of writing this book as we were starting Friends and Fiction. And it was like really fast and furious when we were starting it, and we had no idea that we were going to still be doing it three years later. But we were just trying to get it off the ground as the pandemic was starting really quickly. And so we were all just grabbing the parts that were easy for us but were hard for everybody else. And I think there was something to that kind of in the back of my mind while I was writing that, that it made the whole effort of starting that really easy. Because, for example, I had a lot more website experience than everybody else did. So I was like, oh, let me do that. I'll have our website made. And Mary Kay Andrews had a Zoom account, and none of us had a Zoom account at that time. She's like, I have a paid Zoom account. We can go live on my account. And we were all just kind of like, grabbing at things that made it easier. So, yeah, there's definitely something to that. I wish that was the way that my real life worked more often.

[07:26] Cindy: I think that's exactly right, though, because there are so many things that I'm like, I don't mind doing that at all. And other people are like, oh, I hate that, and vice versa. So, yes, to be able to work with your strengths and pass off your weaknesses would be, like, the greatest thing ever.

[07:42] Kristy: And this comes up in the book, too. But for me, I'm not confrontational, and so I hate having to do anything that's confrontational. And unfortunately, in your life, you have to do that. But a lot of what Daphne, who's one of these protagonists, a lot of times what she's getting on her list are the more confrontational things. Her friends are like, oh, can you write this letter for me? Or can you do this for me? She's like, sure, because she doesn't mind at all. She's like, well, that's just right. It's just how it's supposed to be.

[08:08] Cindy: Well, and it's so much easier to do confrontational things for somebody else. You know what I mean? Like, if you come to me and say, I'm super upset about such and such, and I need this taken care of. I don't have any skin in the game. I'm not upset about it. So it's easy for me to write a very logical, direct email or whatever it is and say, Here you go, and then it works out so much better. So I get that.

[08:29] Kristy: That's great. I love it.

[08:31] Cindy: Well, tell me about the camps.

[08:33] Kristy: Okay, so I got this idea, actually, kind of a long time ago. I mean, I would say probably, I don't know, 2019, early 2020, somewhere in there, that I wanted to write a book about a summer camp. And that was really vague. I didn't really know what it was going to be, but I really just thought, where's somewhere fun that I want to go, that I really want to take my readers. And that was just one of the first places that came to mind. And so I thought, okay, well, I'm going to do this. But in that time, of course, like, early 2020, my son was supposed to be going to summer camp in June or July, I guess. And it was obviously canceled because it was 2020, and it was a pandemic, and they couldn't have camp, but they were trying to save their camp. I mean, they were trying to stay afloat during this time where everything had been canceled for the summer, and they figured out a way to do family camp that was everything was outside, and every family had their own cabin, and they did a really good job of making it sort of, like, safe and socially distanced. And so they gave us the opportunity, like, hey, would you be willing to support us by kind of rolling your tuition over and doing a family camp? And we were like, sure, this sounds great. And it was like, the minute I got there, it wasn't the camp that I grew up going to. It's actually a camp called Camp Seafarer in North Carolina on the river and so a lot of the geography of the camp is really based on Camp Seafare, and it's an old camp. And so while I was there, I was like, oh, my gosh, if these walls could talk, the stories that they could tell. And it was like the stories were just kind of coming out of the walls. And so a lot of the geography I mean, I got up really early with a good friend of mine who grew up her whole life going to that camp. I mean, we walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked so that I could just get an idea of kind of the geography of this camp. But I grew up going to Camp Hollymont in the North Carolina mountains, and a lot of the activities and kind of the terms that they use and even down to all of the cabins and all of the kind of ages of girls being named after birds came from Camp Hollymont. So you'll see sort of bits and pieces of both of those and they sort of combine to make this fictional Camp Holly Springs.

[10:43] Cindy: Well, I think it is so interesting how every camp has its own lingo and way of doing things and structure her. And so it's just fun to read about a new camp different to me, but also bring me back to all of the things I did at the camp that I went to forever, which was Camp Olympia here in Texas. And I loved it. And so it was just fun to relive some of those memories and think about the way my camp experience was versus what the girls were going through in the book. And it was just really fun.

[11:08] Kristy: Good. I love hearing that. Thank you.

[11:11] Cindy: Well, what about creating three distinct women? Was it hard to give them very distinct personalities? And how did you come up with their personalities and how they were going to interact together?

[11:22] Kristy: This book was funny. I'm answering this question in kind of like a roundabout way, but this book was funny because three points of view is a lot, but it was certainly not something that I'd never done before. Under the southern sky. My 2019 book was my 2019 book? No, my 2021 book had four points of view that were very distinct. And then I had written The Wedding Veil, which had two historical points of view and two contemporary points of view. And then Christmas and Peach Tree Bluff was kind of the last book in my Peach Tree Bluff series, and I think it had five points of view. So it wasn't like it was something brand new, but it was interesting to me because on its surface, this story didn't sound like it was going to be that complicated to write, but it really was like in some ways, it was every bit as complicated to write as The Wedding Veil, which was this historical novel with all of this real research and kind of trying to write these two real women. And that really surprised me because I just wasn't expecting that. So the answer to that would be yes. In some ways it was difficult, but then in some ways it was easier because Aunt June is older. She's not old, but she's older than the other two protagonists. She's like in her early fifty s. And so she just had more of a distinct voice, I feel like, in terms of just being a little bit older than my girls who were 30, who had a little bit more of like a younger lingo and kind of vibe to them. But it was hard for me to figure out which points of view I wanted to write. Mary Stuart is another one of the friends in this book and I was like, I knew I was going to write Daphne because I knew I wanted an attorney in this book who has to make a difficult decision. And I knew I was going to write Aunt June because I really wanted the director of this camp to kind of be able to put in her point of view. Because I felt like if she wasn't a character there was too much sort of third party explanation that was going to be going on as to how we got to this place of needing to save this camp. And so then I thought, okay, well, am I going to have Mary Stuart or am I going to have Lanier? Lanier owned an independent bookstore so I just had to put her in there.

[13:33] Cindy: I have to say I loved that, having the indie bookstore in there. You know, me in independent bookstores. You've connected me with a number for my Patreon Bookseller series. So I loved that by the way.

[13:44] Kristy: Oh good, I'm glad. Yeah, that was really fun to write. And that bookstore by the way, is very much based on South Main Book Company in Salisbury, North Carolina, where I grew up. It's one of my favorite bookstores and just one of those dreamy old timey bookstores where the floors creek and it has like the brass fittings on the ladder that you're not allowed to climb it, but you could and that's where.

[14:12] Cindy: You usually do your launch, right?

[14:14] Kristy: I do, yes.

[14:16] Cindy: Thought I remembered that. I think many people have a goal or a dream of owning an indie bookstore and I think that would just be so much fun.

[14:23] Kristy: Absolutely.

[14:24] Cindy: Well, what surprised you the most when writing this one?

[14:26] Kristy: Well, again, I think just it ended up being a more complicated story than I thought. These women all have really complicated backstories and trying to figure out how much of their backstory do you need and how much are we going to stay in the present. That was probably maybe the most difficult part of writing the book. And so that definitely surprised me because I really thought it was going to be kind of an easy breezy book to write, but you never know. They all surprise you sometimes the things that I think are going to be hard turn out being really easy and the ones that I think are going to be really easy or more difficult and you just sometimes you don't know. It's always fun. I mean, this was a really fun book to write. I just probably did a little more revising on this one than I was expecting to, but I think the ending surprised me. We'll talk about this later in the spoiler part. But I had envisioned this book ending differently and then I kind of changed my mind once I got finished with the first draft. I thought, you know, I don't know. And I think that's not unusual because a lot of times, hopefully, if I'm doing my job, these characters become more like real people to me. And so real people evolve. They make different decisions than we think that they might. And so I think that impacted this book a lot.

[15:43] Cindy: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the later spoiler conversation for my Patreon members because I have so many questions about the ending. So that is awesome that we could talk about it in just a little bit.

[15:52] Kristy: Yeah.

[15:53] Cindy: What about the highlight of writing this one?

[15:55] Kristy: Being back at summer camp was definitely one of the highlights. And again, I was writing this book still while we were very much in lockdown. I was not able to tour at that time. I was not out and about seeing my readers. I'm fortunate that I live in a little town in North Carolina on the coast, so we did have a lot of opportunity to be outdoors and we didn't really feel stuck in our house. But still, life was very different. That social aspect was certainly different. And so to be able to get up every morning and be with these women who felt like friends to me and kind of relive some of my summer camp memories and reconnect with old friends that I'd been to camp with and talk to them and say, what did this mean? Or Why were we doing this? Or do I remember this correctly? And things like that. It was just a fun book to write and to be able to kind of relive those experiences and really just thinking about being that age where you're a kid and real life hasn't really sunk in yet, and you get to go away for the part of your summer and there's not really anyone sort of hovering over you. You have another layer of freedom that you're not really used to. Kind of within this confined environment, of course. But there's something really magical about that, about having that autonomy for sort of the first time in your life.

[17:17] Cindy: I agree with that. And the ability to do things that you don't normally do at home, activities, things at night, whatever it is. I just think camp is such a different experience than when you're living at home. And I always had the biggest trouble when I came home readjusting to being at home. It took a few days, and my kids always did, too.

[17:35] Kristy: Yeah, for sure. Because you're used to kind of being obviously you're not on your own, you have counselors, you're within a confined area. But, yes, you do have this different level of freedom. And I think there's something really interesting about going somewhere where maybe you go with a friend or maybe you know a couple of people. But for the most part, especially when you're starting those camp experiences, most of the people that you're with, you don't know. So to have to be put in these situations where you're meeting people that are from different parts of the country or the world and kind of adjusting to all of that is really interesting to me and really shaped a lot of my personality, I think, in who I am. And being able to walk into rooms of people that I don't know and feel like we can probably find common ground. Actually, I've told this story a lot, but I ended up being college roommates with one of my camp friends because we knew each other. We were used to sharing a cabin in the summer with a bunch of other girls, but we only saw each other for a couple of weeks a year. So that was a really fun connection to be able to have this common bond but not be so close that it felt like, oh, I'm just rooming with the same old person. So, yeah, I mean, those friendships are really kind of invaluable.

[18:51] Cindy: They are invaluable. And yes, you're right. You go a lot of times from your own room or sharing a room with a sibling to suddenly having however many campers. Each cabin has 810, twelve. Whatever it is, it's just such a different experience and there's always something happening and so much hubbub, and then you come home and it's quiet. I mean, it's always fine. It's just always a little bit of reentry pain.

[19:11] Kristy: Yeah. Reentry into regular society.

[19:14] Cindy: Exactly. That's exactly right. What about how you pick your character names? I always think it's so interesting because people associate certain characteristics with certain names. So do you have a list of names you keep or do you create your characters and then assign them names? How does that work?

[19:31] Kristy: Okay, so that's a really good question, and it depends on the book. This is actually one of my favorite stories. So for the Peach Tree Bluff series, my mom actually picked all of the names. Oh, really? I was like, These are the characters and these are the sisters, and here's the birth order, and here's what they're like. And she named Caroline, Sloan Emerson and Ansley of my main characters in that book.

[19:51] Cindy: Wow.

[19:52] Kristy: Which I just think is really funny, so she did those for me. So that was really nice. See, hard things send me.

[19:58] Cindy: Yes, exactly.

[19:59] Kristy: Okay. But the funniest part about the names in The Summer of Songbirds, originally Daphne's name was Ivy, and then of course I have Lanier and Mary Stuart and June who are my protagonists. And at the same time, Mary Kay Andrews was working on her Christmas book and as soon as she started talking about it, her main character's name is Ivy Perkins. And I was like, well, my main character's name is Ivy too, and it's like, oh my gosh, we can't put out books like six months apart with the same protagonist. So I changed Ivy to Daphne, but then come to find out she also had a linear in the home records, but fortunately the linear was not a main character. So I was like, okay, I'm not changing, but isn't that hilarious? They're not the most run of the mill names, so I'm like, the fact that we both chose two of the same character names in one book is pretty hilarious.

[20:50] Cindy: That is pretty hilarious. From now on, you're going to have to ask Mary Kay. Okay, I need your character names up front so that we're not overlapping.

[20:57] Kristy: I know, it's like we can't overlap all these character names, but a lot of times I am on the baby name list or somebody just wrote this really great list for southern living and so that's always a good one because usually my books are set in the south, they have southern characters. I'm like, okay, I need some good Southern names that are maybe a little bit different, that you don't hear all the time, so it's always fun and.

[21:20] Cindy: You're not repeating yourself.

[21:21] Kristy: Yeah, exactly. Well, you know what, that is a concern of mine. I've started to realize that not with maybe my main characters, but I've started to realize I'm going to have to keep a list of what the names I'm using are because at some point eleven books in, you're probably repeating yourself.

[21:39] Cindy: Well, yes, because just like anything, you're probably drawn to certain names over and over again, like you really like the name Matthew or something. So Matthew is going to probably show up. That's the name you're going to think about first. So, yes, you need to make sure you're keeping up with you don't end up with a Matthew and every one of your stories.

[21:53] Kristy: Exactly. Well, and weirdly, I mean, Matthew is a great example because I like very I mean, I hate to say standard, but I like very standard male names. Like, I just like the kind of traditional names that you hear a lot for men, whereas with my women's names, I feel like I try to branch out a little bit more and not have everybody be Kate and Kathy and Beth. I mean, I try to switch those up a little bit more and I don't know why that is. But so, especially for my male character names, I'm like, okay, I have got to make sure I'm mixing it up a little bit. And I don't have a Henry and a Sam. In every book I ever write, people.

[22:33] Cindy: Are going to say, is this the same Henry as before? You're like, no, I just really like the name Henry.

[22:38] Kristy: Henry. That's right.

[22:39] Cindy: Well, what about your cover and your title? Your cover is just beautiful.

[22:43] Kristy: I love this cover so much. So this cover I'm glad you asked, because this cover has a good story, actually. So when I was writing this book, there was I can't remember if it was Travel and Leisure or Conde Nas Traveler. It was one or the other, and I subscribed to both of them. But again, of course, it's the pandemic. So I'm, like, waiting with bated breath for my travel magazines to come to pretend like I'm going somewhere else. And so one of them came in the mail and the COVID was just so stunning as they always are, but it was this very almost like sepia toned image of a woman stepping into what was very clearly a swim lake, like an old timey swim lake with the metal ladder and you can only sort of see the bottom half of her. And then this ladder and this swim lake. And it was like, the vibe that I wanted for this cover. It was like, this could be today, it could be 65 years ago. It was just one of those images that sort of made you think about this kind of, like, timeless piece of summer and what people were up to. And so I actually sent my pub team this image, and I was like, Obviously, I don't want this, but I want it to feel like this. And so they sent me a lot of times we go through rounds and rounds and rounds of covers, or even if we find a cover that we like right off the bat, we're making lots of changes. And this one, they sent it to me, and right off the bat, I was like, yes. The only thing that we changed was there's a sailboat on the COVID now, kind of in the background. That was originally a canoe, which was very cute and campish, but because sailing is kind of a big part of the story, I was like, I think we need to have a sailboat. But really, otherwise the COVID that you see is, like, the exact cover that they sent me. And it was an immediate, like, yes, that's the COVID So that was really easy. The Summer of Songbirds, too. Normally when I'm writing a book, the title comes out of a line that I really like or something that jumps out at me or comes to me through the writing process. But for this one, I actually just remember, this is hilarious. I was in spin class. I was like, on the. Spin bike. And a lot of times, I don't know why, but I have these great moments of clarity. I guess the endorphins are real. This just popped into my head, like out of nowhere. I wasn't thinking, what should my title be or what would be a good book title? I hadn't even started writing the book yet and it just popped into my head, The Summer of Songbirds. And I was like, that is my title. It sounds like a book about camp, but you don't exactly know what the songbirds are. And it's like kind of a nod to nature. And this is it. This is definitely going to be it. So I titled it before I even started writing.

[25:24] Cindy: Did you leap off the bike and go run and write it down? Or did you repeat The Summer of Songbirds the entire rest of the class so you wouldn't forget? Because that would be me. I would be like, that has the greatest title. And then by the time the class was over, I'd be like, what was that title again?

[25:37] Kristy: What was it again? What was it again?

[25:39] Cindy: Yes.

[25:39] Kristy: No, I just was repeating it over and over in my head and I was like, oh, I love that. That's a perfect title for my camp book.

[25:46] Cindy: Oh, I love that. Well, what about what you're working on next?

[25:50] Kristy: Well, that is a great question because I just finished my edits on my 2024 book. I'm like 90% sure is releasing April 23 of 2024. And it is called Our Last Summer on Sunset Lane. And this is a book that has been in my head for years and years and years. It's just been waiting to take shape. And those are my favorites because when I sit down to write them and I get going, I don't know it consciously, but it's like somewhere in my subconscious, the book's just there and those always end up being the ones that just come together in the best way. So this is a story about it's actually a grandmother and granddaughter story, but the grandmother has passed away long before the granddaughter was ever even born. So it's a little bit of a different grandmother granddaughter story. But this granddaughter discovers that her mom and uncle have kept the house that her grandparents lived in, that they grew up in. In Beaufort, North Carolina, where I live for like 50 years, this house has just been closed up and sitting there. Their parents died in sort of a tragic accident, and just no one could bring themselves to go back to the house. And so they've decided that it's time that they need to sell this house, that it's been sitting there too long and that they need to finally do this, but neither one of them really wants to be the one to take the plunge. And so for lots of reasons that you'll see unravel in the book, Keaton, who is the granddaughter, actually ends up kind of taking on this task of going to this little tiny town of Beaufort, North Carolina, and cleaning out this house to put it on the market. But as she's cleaning out this house, she starts to realize not only that her grandparents were really interesting, fascinating people, she's learning about them as she's cleaning out this house and she's falling in love with this little town that they made their home in. But she's also starting to realize that the story that she's been told her whole life about what happened to them might not be true. And then you're also seeing the grandmother's point of view unravel from the 1930s until this fateful day in August of 1976. Like I said, it was kind of based on a family story. I will tell you the family story because it really gives the book away. But it's something that I've really been thinking about writing for a long time. And it was one of those stories that felt like it was kind of handed to me. I had like this AHA moment of like, oh, my gosh. And it just sort of, like, washed over me all at once. So I'm really thrilled about this book. I really love it. I loved writing it, and I can't wait for it to be out.

[28:33] Cindy: Okay, that sounds really good.

[28:35] Kristy: Thank you.

[28:36] Cindy: I can't wait to read it already.

[28:38] Kristy: Thank you.

[28:39] Cindy: Well, before we wrap up, what have you read recently that you really liked?

[28:43] Kristy: Oh, my gosh, so many things. Okay, so I just started Elin Hildebrand's The Five Star Weekend, because she needs to be recommended because not every person in America is reading.

[28:54] Cindy: Exactly. Who? Elin who?

[28:58] Kristy: Wait, can you spell that? No, but it really is. I mean, she just never disappoints. Her books are always so great. I also recently read The Paris Daughter by Kristen Harmel. And, I mean, I love Kristen. She writes historical fiction, world War II fiction mostly. And this was one of those books that I sat down and I was like, I'm just going to read a couple of chapters and I couldn't put it down. I read it in like, two days and these just like, crazy bursts in the middle of the night just like, couldn't put this book down. So that was really, really fantastic and I highly recommend that. Gosh, I've read so many good things lately. I'm, like, looking at my shelves right now thinking, what is something that maybe everyone hasn't necessarily heard of? Well, The Magnolia Summer by Victoria Ben Frank, which I'm sure everyone has heard of, but that was a really great, fun one. She's Dorothea Benton, Frank's daughter. Oh, gosh, I was so excited about that one and just really waiting for that, as I think a lot of people were, of course. Oh, I know one that was so good. The Happy Life of Isidora Bentley by Courtney Walsh. It's such a feel good story and definitely one that I would recommend. Okay.

[30:12] Cindy: I'm going to have to look for that one. I'm not familiar with it.

[30:14] Kristy: Okay, good. There's one.

[30:17] Cindy: Good. I always love learning new titles, so that's perfect.

[30:20] Kristy: Yeah.

[30:21] Cindy: Well, Kristy, as always, thank you so much for joining me today on the Thoughts from a Page podcast, and I can't wait to talk spoilers in a few minutes. But I am really excited for The Summer of Songbirds to get out into the world.

[30:32] Kristy: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

[30:36] Cindy: Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I would love to connect with you on Instagram or Facebook, where you can find me at @thoughtsfromapage. If you enjoy this show, please consider joining my Patreon group to access bonus content and support the podcast. If you have a moment to rate the show or subscribe to it wherever you listen to your podcasts, I would really appreciate it. It makes a big difference. And please tell all of your friends about Thoughts from a Page, word of mouth does wonders to help the show grow. The book discussed in this episode can be purchased at my Bookshop storefront, and the link is in the show notes. I hope you'll tune in next time.