Susan Petrone's Blog

In Throw Like a Woman, which came out in 2015, the protagonist, Brenda, gets discovered as a pitcher when someone takes a video of her throwing smoke at a test-your-speed pitching game at a Cleveland Indians game. It seemed like a plausible if slightly improbably scenario. Lo and behind, I saw a list of the Best MLB Stories of 2019 and there was the story of a guy named Nathan Patterson, who threw 96 mph in a speed pitch challenge and ended up signing a contract with the Oakland A's. Go figure.

So there's your life imitating art moment. And sometimes art imitates life. Or we turn life into art, as is the case with the upcoming The Heebie-Jeebie Girl, which is based on some real family history. The story is set in 1977 Youngstown and revolves around a little girl with a talent for picking the daily lottery number. When her grandmother is robbed of her lottery winnings by two men who come to her house pretending to be from the water department, the little girl and her great uncle decide to try and find the perps themselves. Most of that synopsis is true. Years and years ago, one of my cousins really did go through a several-month period where she picked a lot of winning lottery numbers. And two guys pretending to be from the water department really did come to my grandmother's house and rob her. Those events were the little seed that grew into a novel that I've described as 'Crime and Punishment set in 1977 Youngstown, only with jokes and magic.'

If you come to a book talk for The Heebie-Jeebie Girl, you can hear more about the process of deciding how to turn these real life events into fiction. Or you can read it and try to guess what's real and what is imagined. Hope to see you at an upcoming event!

What does King Kong have to do with Thanksgiving? That's a question I’ve been asking myself since I was a little kid. When I was growing up, the local UHF station, WUAB, used to show the original King Kong every year on Thanksgiving. If you grew up in northeast Ohio, you probably saw it at least once. Both of my parents grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which is also the setting for my upcoming novel, The Heebie-Jeebie Girl. I remember every Thanksgiving my parents would pack all six of us kids into the station wagon and drive the 65 miles from Cleveland to Youngstown to see my grandparents. And my other grandmother. And maybe an aunt or an uncle or two. And some cousins. I remember happy food comas and poring over the J.C. Penny Wish Book (google it), and, yes, trying to watch a little bit of King Kong. In a small nod to my childhood and my family, there is a scene in The Heebie-Jeebie Girl in which the young protagonist, Hope, and her great uncle Joe watch King Kong on Thanksgiving 1977.

It’s an odd film to associate with Thanksgiving and gratitude–I’m not even going to try and make a logical connection. I don’t think there is one. Maybe there doesn’t need to be. Maybe the UHF station didn’t show it every year, but in the Thanksgiving of my memory, it did. It’s a fond if incongruous memory.

I haven’t watched King Kong in years, and I haven’t had occasion to spend Thanksgiving in Youngstown for a long time either. I still love that city, so much so that I wrote a novel about it. The Heebie-Jeebie Girl comes out April 21. You can read more about it on Goodreads (maybe add it to your bookshelf) or pre-order from your favorite brick and mortar or online bookseller. No matter how you celebrate it, I hope you and yours have a wonderful Thanksgiving.