We writers like to see other writers get their books into print, particularly when it happens for a friend.
Leslie Huber was a member of my writers group for three years. We worked with her to breathe life into a dust-dry academic work—her family's history, a massive volume—to make it something people outside of history department circles would want to read.
And she did it.
The Journey Takers is a dynamite read.
Sadly, Leslie couldn't convince a major house to publish her book, so she made a bet that she had built up a large enough audience through her lectures, appearances at conferences, and her magazine stories that she could self-publish and get enough sales to make it worthwhile.
That's where she is now, like the rest of us published writers, out selling books.
I asked Cathy Riddle, another member of my writers group and, like me, a former newspaper reporter, to whip together a story on a new published writer and her book. Here it is.
Enjoy.
Anything but ordinary
by Cathy Riddle
Leslie Albrecht Huber once worked as a professional genealogist, helping people trace their family roots. Makes sense that when she set out to write her first book—a dream she's had since age five—she wrote about a woman who did just that. In her newly published The Journey Takers, a non-fiction work that reviewers say, "makes… the past come alive," the Massachusetts resident chronicles her experience exploring her ancestry. Feedback from early readers helped her shape, revise, and polish the book.
"I was in a writer's group in Madison," said Huber, who lived here from 2000 to 2005. "Then when we moved to Amherst, I wasn't connected to a group, but I decided I needed feedback on the manuscript. It was scary, but I gave it to five or ten people to read. One close friend called me and said, 'So, who is it I'm supposed to care about here?'"
The comment sent Huber, a wife and now mother four children, into the business of revising her manuscript, which she likened to "weeding a garden." Not easy, she says, because "you kind of plant everything in at first. Then I become more focused."
She cut, revised, and put herself at the center of the book's story, reluctantly paring down details of her own extended German, Swedish, and English family. She shaped the book into a more universal story of the immigrant experience.
The result met with the approval of a magazine editor she worked with previously—Huber has written at least 100 articles on family history for various publications including The History Channel Magazine—and the editor asked to publish it. Her book launch took place last month. Since then, she's been on a whirlwind book tour. It's also, she says, a family vacation.
"We just left Cedar City, Utah, and we went to Bryce Canyon, and now we're driving to Nevada to see a college roommate of mine," she said from a cell phone, somewhere in the desert American West recently. "After that it's Bakersfield, California, where we'll spend a week, and I'm speaking two times for the book. We're also going to Disneyland and Yosemite while there."
Huber is a writer who meshes family, work, literature, and life together as naturally as one sentence of her 263-page book flows into the next. The story of her ancestors Georg Albrecht and Mina Haker, Karsti Nilsdotter, and others abounds with historical and intimate observations. On page 88 of The Journey Takers, Huber the young mother spends a restless night with a sick child, growing weary at the seeming ordinariness of it all, then thinks:
To me, few labels cut deeper than 'ordinary.' My greatest desire is to reach beyond ordinary, to do something that matters. When my descendants describe me, I would rather them use almost any adjective besides ordinary . . . I think of my assumption that Karsti's grandparents were ordinary and I feel a twinge of guilt. It seems harsh to place this label on people I know so little about.
Members of Tuesdays With Story—her Madison writer's group—shared a meal with Leslie during her July visit, when she spoke to a group of more than thirty people at the Sequoya Branch Library. Between bites of gnocchi, Leslie entertained with tales of book title changes, horrific writers conferences, and even how her own husband's name somehow turned into "David" during the course of publication.
"They said his name—George—and Georg, whom I wrote about in the book, were too much alike," she said. "So I changed my husband's name to David. A friend of mine whose husband's real name is David said, 'I think you secretly have a crush on my husband.'"
Huber's path to publication didn't necessarily follow the route others have pursued. She did take many of the steps that most writers do. A thoughtful researcher, she labored long and hard over the manuscript during the course of nearly ten years. She joined a writer's group. She steadily chipped away at the book, even while her family moved around, from Madison, to Valencia, Spain and then to Massachusetts.
And she circulated in the industry. Once, she went to an important writer's conference in New York. Unfortunately, the experience of watching fellow scribes on stage, before a group of critical literary types who sought to find flaws with the pitches, left a bad taste in her mouth. She did cull one good tip from that conference, however.
"Someone did say to me, 'What you have here is a niche book.'"
She dedicated herself to appealing to that niche—in her case, people interested in family history. Huber already had an audience for that and the professional training. She has a bachelor's degree in history with a focus in German family history from Brigham Young University. She also obtained a master's degree in public affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
After her long and difficult rewrite, Huber says she never went back to the original manuscript, never was tempted to revert to that draft, because she liked the finished version. That experience is something she shares with audiences now.
"Don't make (your book) for everyone," she tells people. And to those who are not experienced writers she says, "You don't have to go down the road to publication if you don't want to. You don't have to be a Pulitzer Prize candidate to write your family history." She adds, "Writing is scary to people who don't do it. A lot of people want to write their family history not because they want to write but because they want to create a legacy. They enjoy the research, and it's a way to appreciate their past."
To other writers she advises an attitude of flexibility. "Often we're afraid of change even in our own writing. We're reluctant to let go of what we've already created, the things we've been working on."
Coming up later this month, Huber will speak to a group of genealogists and writers at the Salt Lake City Public Library. She's excited and nervous. Like her adventurous fore-bearers whom she honored in her book, this author will probably need to rest up when the journey is over.
Post note:
Want to get a copy of Leslie's book? Go to Amazon. It's there, $17.95. And if you want to know more about Leslie and her book, go to her website.
© Jerry Peterson.
