Sky Eccles has a father who is Mormon and a mother who is Protestant. Her father's roots go back to the founder of his church and the pioneers; her mother's roots are foggy and forgotten. Because she was born and raised with a double identity, Sky sees her surroundings in duplicate, like a Kodak color print sitting beside its own filmy negative. A new career in journalism is giving her clarity of vision
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Skylar Eccles is growing up in Utah as the child of a mixed marriage between a Mormon father and a Protestant mother. As a "half-breed," she faces constant, subtle pressure from her Mormon relatives to convert and witnesses her Protestant relatives' disdain for the Mormons. Sky's struggle with her belief in God and her place in life is offset by her grandmother Harriet's memories of converting to Mormonism and making a place for herself in her new community. Howard-Johnson strengthens her novel with behind-the-scenes details of Mormon life and history in a book suitable for all collections, particularly those where sf author Orson Scott Card's religious books are popular.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Publisher
"This is the Place," won Sime-Gen's Reviewers' Choice Award in the spring of 2001 and was named Top Ten Novels in the Preditor and Editors Readers' Poll that same year. AmErica House honored it for exceptional sales and a chapter from the book was a finalist in the prestigious Masters' Literary Award. Another was selected for inclusion in The Copperfield Review and one was a finalist in The New Millennium Review's annual contest. It was also an NUW Book Club selection and the author received their award of excellence for service.
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More About the Author
Hi.
I am best known as The Frugal Book Promoter, but I want to be known as a literary writer, poet, and all round smart and giving marketer. You can see I have a problem with branding, not because I don't know how to brand but because my career is so diverse. Ha!
As a college freshman, I was the youngest person ever hired as a staff writer for the Salt Lake Tribune--"A Great Pulitzer Prize Winning Newspaper"--where I wrote features for the society page and a column under the name Debra Paige.
Later, in New York, I was an editorial assistant at Good Housekeeping Magazine. I also handled accounts for famous fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert. She was the one who developed the first "10 Best Dressed List," and it was my fun job to write releases for celebrity designers of the time including Pauline Trigere, Rudy Gernreich, and Christian Dior.
I have also been a consultant for the Oak Park Press in the Chicago area.
In my many former lives I have also written columns and reviews for The Pasadena Star News, Home Decor Buyer, and the Glendale News-Press. I write a "Back to Literature" column for www.Myshelf.com where I also give an annual Noble (Not Nobel!) Prize.
I studied at the University of Utah, graduated from USC (University of Southern California) and have done postgraduate work in writing at UCLA. I loved the UCLA and San Diego State Writers' Conferences I attended and I'm now an instructor for UCLA Extension Writers' Program. You can find all their classes at www.UCLAExtension.edu.
I adored studying writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University in Prague.
My first novel, "This Is The Place," and my book of creative nonfiction, "Harkening," are both multi award-winners. A chapbook of my poetry, published by Finishing Line Press was named a Ten Best Reads by the Compulsive Reader (www.compulsivereader.com) and the Military Writers Society of America honored it with a silver medal for excellence. I have also partnered with Magdalena Ball for the Celebration Series of poetry chapbooks including "She Wore Emerald Then," "Cherished Pulse," "Imagining the Future" "Blooming Red," and "Deeper Into the Pond," a chapbook with a feminist theme. I also wrote a screenplay, "The Killing Ground."
My stories and poems have appeared in anthologies like: "Pass/Fail," edited by Rose A. O. Kleidon, PhD; and in journals like Pear Noir, Front Range, The Pedestal Magazine and many more. One of my poems won first place in the Franklin Christoph prize, 2010.
I was given the Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award by California Legislature members, Carol Liu, Dario Frommer, and Jack Scott. I can't help but be proud of that.
In it's first edition, "The Frugal Book Promoter" became an instant best seller as an e-book on ebookad and the paperback opened to rave reviews here on Amazon. It it now in its second edition, expanded and updated. It became the first in a the How To Do It Frugally series. "The Frugal Editor: Put YOur Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success" is the next. I published a couple booklets to go with it. One on word trippers and other gremlins lying in wait to trip you up. It is "Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips." The other is "The Great First Impression Book Proposal."
The Book Publicists of Southern California honored me with their Irwin Award and the "Pasadena Weekly" for literary activism. My hometown's Character and Ethics Committee honored me for my work promoting tolerance with my writing.
Yes, I am having fun yet!
Find me at:
Sharing with Writers and Readers blog (A Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites pick!), www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com
www.HowToDoItFrugally.com
www.CarolynHoward-Johnson.com
My newsletter by sending an e-mail with "subscribe" in the subject line to HoJoNews@aol.com.
First person essay: http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/published_works_almanac.htm
I am best known as The Frugal Book Promoter, but I want to be known as a literary writer, poet, and all round smart and giving marketer. You can see I have a problem with branding, not because I don't know how to brand but because my career is so diverse. Ha!
As a college freshman, I was the youngest person ever hired as a staff writer for the Salt Lake Tribune--"A Great Pulitzer Prize Winning Newspaper"--where I wrote features for the society page and a column under the name Debra Paige.
Later, in New York, I was an editorial assistant at Good Housekeeping Magazine. I also handled accounts for famous fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert. She was the one who developed the first "10 Best Dressed List," and it was my fun job to write releases for celebrity designers of the time including Pauline Trigere, Rudy Gernreich, and Christian Dior.
I have also been a consultant for the Oak Park Press in the Chicago area.
In my many former lives I have also written columns and reviews for The Pasadena Star News, Home Decor Buyer, and the Glendale News-Press. I write a "Back to Literature" column for www.Myshelf.com where I also give an annual Noble (Not Nobel!) Prize.
I studied at the University of Utah, graduated from USC (University of Southern California) and have done postgraduate work in writing at UCLA. I loved the UCLA and San Diego State Writers' Conferences I attended and I'm now an instructor for UCLA Extension Writers' Program. You can find all their classes at www.UCLAExtension.edu.
I adored studying writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University in Prague.
My first novel, "This Is The Place," and my book of creative nonfiction, "Harkening," are both multi award-winners. A chapbook of my poetry, published by Finishing Line Press was named a Ten Best Reads by the Compulsive Reader (www.compulsivereader.com) and the Military Writers Society of America honored it with a silver medal for excellence. I have also partnered with Magdalena Ball for the Celebration Series of poetry chapbooks including "She Wore Emerald Then," "Cherished Pulse," "Imagining the Future" "Blooming Red," and "Deeper Into the Pond," a chapbook with a feminist theme. I also wrote a screenplay, "The Killing Ground."
My stories and poems have appeared in anthologies like: "Pass/Fail," edited by Rose A. O. Kleidon, PhD; and in journals like Pear Noir, Front Range, The Pedestal Magazine and many more. One of my poems won first place in the Franklin Christoph prize, 2010.
I was given the Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award by California Legislature members, Carol Liu, Dario Frommer, and Jack Scott. I can't help but be proud of that.
In it's first edition, "The Frugal Book Promoter" became an instant best seller as an e-book on ebookad and the paperback opened to rave reviews here on Amazon. It it now in its second edition, expanded and updated. It became the first in a the How To Do It Frugally series. "The Frugal Editor: Put YOur Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success" is the next. I published a couple booklets to go with it. One on word trippers and other gremlins lying in wait to trip you up. It is "Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips." The other is "The Great First Impression Book Proposal."
The Book Publicists of Southern California honored me with their Irwin Award and the "Pasadena Weekly" for literary activism. My hometown's Character and Ethics Committee honored me for my work promoting tolerance with my writing.
Yes, I am having fun yet!
Find me at:
Sharing with Writers and Readers blog (A Writer's Digest 101 Best Websites pick!), www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com
www.HowToDoItFrugally.com
www.CarolynHoward-Johnson.com
My newsletter by sending an e-mail with "subscribe" in the subject line to HoJoNews@aol.com.
First person essay: http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com/published_works_almanac.htm
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A love affair with a family.,
By
This review is from: This Is the Place (Paperback)
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, This Is the Place (America House, 2001)....The comparison on the back jacket between This Is the Place and Gone with the Wind is ludicrous. Mitchell's first (and blessedly only) novel was an overblown, unreadable piece of melodrama that should better have been published, in the words of Melville, to the flames. Howard-Johnson's first novel is exactly the opposite; it's a spare novel, rarely a word out of place and with very little filler, without long diversions that have little to do with the central characters. No, Gone with the Wind this isn't, and I, for one, couldn't be happier. Set in 1959, This Is the Place gives us Skylar Eccles, between high school and college, working for the local paper, and a non-Mormon living in the state of Utah. She's dating a mormon seriously, and it looks as if she's treading the same route as most of her ancestors that we get to know in this novel: she's going to marry a Mormon. But how that affects her, how her wordless battle against pre-ERA workplaces, and the various other strings of plot here are of secondary importance. This Is the Place is a novel about the Eccles family and Sky's attempt to put the recent family history into words. It is a love affair with genealogy, and that is what makes this novel shine. More than once while reading this, I found myself making comparisons to Lee Smith's brilliant novel Oral History; I get the feeling that the audiences for the two books would cross over perfectly. Since I felt compelled to mention the prejudice angle previously, I might as well attempt to justify it. Sure, there's prejudice to be found here. Anyone who grew up with Tom Fitzgerald's wondrous Great Brain books has a basic understanding of the ins and outs of Utah society. Not much changed between T. D. and his family at the turn of the century and Sky in 1959. Much is made of the oppression of the Mormons by American society; much is made of the oppression the Mormons foist on others, as well, both the non-Mormons living in Utah and those places to whom the mormons send missionaries. There's also a rather biting passage about the non-Mormon minority's feelings towards the Mormons that had me wanting to stand up and cheer for our heroine. Yes, prejudice is pervasive in this novel, but it's not thrown in our faces with the tacit understanding that we should Do Something About It. It's presented in a more Nietzschian fashion-- what doesn't kill us, My main problem with the book has nothing at all to do with Carolyn Howard-Johnson and the tales she spins within its pages, but with the publishers. The editor fell asleep at the wheel more times than I can count, and every spelling and grammatical mistake jars, especially when there are ten or twenty per page (this is commonplace in the large italicized blocks towards the end where Sky actually starts writing down all this family history). If you're a nitpicker, beware-- there are large blocks of this novel where you'll be slowed down by a shoddy editing department. I thought the book was well worth reading despite that, but your mileage may vary. *** 1/2
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful first novel,
By A Customer
This review is from: This Is the Place (Paperback)
In "This is the Place," Carolyn Howard-Johnson sheds light on the mysterious world of Mormonism. Growing up Methodist in a Mormon-populated town, I had never understood the beliefs of the Mormons until I read this book. Despite the push-pull that forces Sky Eccles to reconsider her place in Utah -- and, subsequently, in her family -- the author's tone is compassionate for all her characters, both Mormon and not. Particularly satisfying is the twist ending, a delightful surprise that left this reader happy for the journey. In an age that doesn't quite appreciate literary authors, Ms. Howard-Johnson has created a work of depth and ambition that doesn't speak down to its readers but rather allows them to become a part of the tale. Well-done!
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is the Place is Poetic History,
By Kay Stauble (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: This Is the Place (Paperback)
Carolyn Howard Johnson takes the reader back in time to an era of polygomy and prejudice in Utah. She shows us that our rightous prejudice is exclusive and hurtful. Living as a minority in any community requires courage. Sky is an example of one womans courage to row against the tide and be true to herself. The message that prejudice can be cloaked by love, family, and church is skillfully presented whitout defaming the founding principles of the LDS Church. As an active, open minded LDS member, I can appreciate her message and take it to heart and still say: The church is perfect, the people aren't! The book sends a message that we still have a long way to go in fully appreciating diversity.
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