In summer 2002, when writer Eileen Favorite trekked up to Ragdale to begin work on a novel, she was coming off a terrible year. She’d lost a brother to cancer, her father-in-law had died, and her professional life seemed to be on hold: after a string of rejections she’d been forced to face the fact that the realistic coming-of-age novel she’d finished the previous year wasn’t going to sell, and she’d already abandoned an attempt at another novel. She arrived at the Lake Forest artists’ retreat with nothing more than the conviction that she wanted to escape from the details of her own life. “I really wanted to write something from the imagination,” she says.
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That turned out not to be easy. After getting off to what felt like a good start at Ragdale, she had to shelve the project. Favorite, who was raised in the Chicago area and graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana, had spent four years on the west coast in the publishing business before following her husband back to Chicago in 1994. By ’99 she’d completed an MFA in writing at the School of the Art Institute and was teaching there and at the University of Chicago’s Graham School—two jobs she still holds. In the fall of 2002, with grad-school loans to pay off, she also took a full-time gig teaching middle school in the suburbs. During the two years she held that job, her writing was limited to the occasional poem or essay. It wasn’t until 2004 that she had time to revisit the story of the mother, the daughter, and the boardinghouse. In the summer of 2005 she spent a month at Catwalk, a New York estate affiliated with the School of the Art Institute. There, in a tower overlooking the Hudson River, she wrote through to the story’s close, and by the spring of 2006 she was looking for an agent.
The first publisher who looked at the book took a pass but sent it back with advice on revision. At this juncture, so often painful for writers, Favorite says her background in publishing really helped: having been an editor, she says she “appreciates” editorial suggestions. She rewrote through the summer, and in September 2006 Walsh sent the manuscript out again, this time to several publishers. What happened next was amazing: within a week, Favorite says, five offers were on the table. The Heroines was published last month by Scribner, under the aegis of its top editor. Favorite won’t reveal what they paid for it but says Walsh had told her a first-time novelist could typically expect between $5,000 and $50,000; she was floored to get “much more than that.” Deals were also made for audio and foreign rights (for publication in Italy, Korea, Finland, and the UK), and it’s being shopped around in Hollywood.
Miscellany
Thu 1/17, 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299.
Tue 1/22, 7 PM, Book Stall at Chestnut Court, 811 Elm, Winnetka, 847-446-8880.
Sat 1/26, 4 PM, Borders, 2210 W. 95th, 773-445-5471.
