A Vermont-based author’s latest novel is set in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, including Lexington.
Released on July 1, “Gemma Sommerset: A Novel” by Jill McCroskey Coupe tells the story of “70 years in the life of Gemma Sommerset, who loved her husbands and her daughters but longed for an identity of her own,” according to the novel’s summary.
The novel begins in the 1950s with the titular Sommerset attending a summer camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. While there, she is “given a glimpse of her future self — a woman capable of accomplishing just about anything. But what are the odds? Isn’t life, after all, a game of chance?”
“My parents sent me to college to find a husband,” Coupe said of her own career. “All I was ever supposed to do in life was get married. Bored staying home, I ended up with two master’s degrees and a career as a librarian and now a novelist. The marriage didn’t last, but my son, a zoology professor, has become a terrific first reader.”
Coupe began writing the novel in 2019 and, during the pandemic, she contacted several librarians with the Rockbridge Regional Library System who “gave me very helpful details about Lexington via email,” Coupe said. “I thanked them then, and I’ll thank them now.”
Coupe has some family connections to Lexington, with several family members graduating from Washington and Lee University. Part of setting the novel in Lexington, she said, was “giving myself an excuse to visit the town.” She visited in the summer of 2022 and spent a few days in Lexington.
“This was not long enough, and I knew it at the time, but I hope the city’s friendly inhabitants will forgive any mistakes I’ve made,” she said.
“Gemma Sommerset” is Coupe’s third novel, with her previous two winning medals at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She won a 2017 IPPY Gold Medal for her first novel, “True Stories at the Smoky View” (She Writes Press, 2016), and a 2021 IPPY Silver Medal for her second, “Beginning with Cannonballs” (She Writes Press, 2020). A former librarian at Johns Hopkins University, Coupe has a master of fine art in fiction from Warren Wilson College. She grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., near the Southern Appalachians. She currently lives in southern Vermont.
“Gemma Sommerset” is available everywhere books are sold or at www.rootstockpublishing. com, with autographed copies available from Phoenix Books in Rutland, Vt.
