Thursday, April 8, 2010

Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

Here are my thoughts about this compelling middle grade novel.



The roundup on Heart of a Shepherd.
Learn more about Rosanne Parry at her website
She is represented by Stephen Fraser at Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency.
Jim Thomas at Random House edited the book.

I emailed Rosanne Parry and asked if she had any advice she could share with aspiring writers. Here's her reply:
This is not so much advice as an observation. HEART OF A SHEPHERD is

the book it is, in part, because I thought I'd never sell it. Brother
is such a quirky character and Malhuer County is so far out of the
mainstream, I just assumed no one would want it. As a consequence I
focused on learning as much as I could about how to structure a book
that takes place over a whole year and how to handle a large family
while keeping to focus tightly on just one character. I ended up with
a story unlike anything I'd read recently and not a good match for any
editor or agent's list of "what they are looking for". Which, as it
turned out, was exactly what my editor and agent liked about it.