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This is the place where you'll find information on my latest title for use by book club coordinators.
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 Like most novelists, I am both humbled and amazed when a complete stranger – not my sibling, my mother or my wife – decides to devote several hours of his or her life to reading my work. And when an entire book club decides to discuss my work, that just compounds my astonishment. Not to mention my gratitude.
So, to ease my conscience and allow me to appear just a little less pole-axed, please allow me to become less of a stranger by sharing with you a little about me and my novel, In High Places….
Like Laurie (Patrick’s mother in In High Places), I came to Christ as an adult. Likewise, I worked between degrees and was glad that one can graduate from college later than one’s peers and not necessarily be taller than one’s classmates. Eventually I earned both an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing, but do not view myself as a literary sort of writer; I am most comfortable thinking of myself as a storyteller.
When it comes to the genesis of In High Places, I guess that credit goes to the United States Mint. In 1999, my daughter was nine years old and fascinated with the then-new State Quarters program (she is now 17 and mostly fascinated with music, fashion … and boys). I got in the habit of checking my change to see if I had any quarters that she needed for her collection, and one day (I think it was while I was walking out of the 7-11), I found not a state quarter, but a Bicentennial quarter: the one with the Revolutionary War drummer on it.* As I was a young adult in 1976, that got me remembering 1976, the Bicentennial year, when seemingly everything was red-white-and-blue (and, curiously enough, lemon-scented). It also got me thinking about what I was doing in the summer of that year – I spent a lot of my time rock-climbing at Seneca Rocks, in West Virginia.
That gave me time and place. Novels tend to be about relationships, and so I started to think about two really important relationships in most peoples’ lives: the relationship with their fathers, and with their first loves. I decided to write a novel about both.
At the time, I was also doing making a deep-dive through the epistles of the apostle Paul, and I was struck by the theme of hope in his writings – both the importance and the beauty of it.
That, in a nutshell, is where the book came from. As to where it was going, I frankly did not give that much thought when I was writing it. That makes it a bit unusual for me.
All of my other novels, including the two that I am working on at the moment, were created initially as proposals and then finished once they’d been placed under contract with a publisher. In High Places was a novel that I write initially simply for the pleasure of it. It came together in the spaces between other projects. Sometimes it was all I worked on for weeks, and sometimes months went by without me touching it. But I was always thinking about it. In the end, seven years went by between the time I put the novel’s first words on paper and the time I finished it – quite a departure from the 12 to 18 months of nonstop work that I usually put into a novel.
The book’s tone, point of view, and overall character are so different from what I had written previously that I remember telling my wife, “I might just have to put this into print-on-demand and give it to family and friends for Christmas.” But just about that time David Long, a fiction editor at Bethany House, contacted me and asked if I would consider working with Bethany on a future book. I sent him the very-nearly completed manuscript, and he, my agent and I were soon discussing an agreement for three stand-alone (non-series) novels.
You may choose to see Dave’s contacting me at that exact point as a coincidence. I cannot, and do not.
In High Places has gotten me more reader mail than my other four novels combined, much of it on topics spawned by the two relationships in the novel. And many have commented that they are delighted at the prospect of a Christian novel in which everything is not neatly sewn and delivered in the final sentence of the final paragraph. They are glad to see a Christian book that has a tenor very much like that of their own Christian lives.
If your book group prefers to read a book as it is delivered, without input from the author, I can certainly respect that. But if you would like input from me, that might be possible, provided you can work within the constraints of my oftentimes crazy work and travel schedules (I travel quite a bit, and as I write this, have been out of the country twice in just the last month). If you would like to arrange a conference call with your group, or an e-mail Q&A, please write to anopenbook@bethanyhouse.com, and we’ll see what we can put together for you.
Thanks so much again for your consideration and your interest in contemporary fiction. I sincerely hope that reading you will enjoy reading In High Places as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Blessings abundant,
Tom Morrisey
* Extra credit if you can find the Bicentennial quarter in the text of In High Places.
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1. This novel takes place largely within the world of extreme rockclimbing, a world with which most people are not familiar. Do you find this setting alienating or intriguing? Why?
2. In addition to being set in a world only slightly known to most people, this novel is obviously being told by a middle-age man, recounting a time when he was much younger (better than 30 years ago). How does this add to or detract from the story?
3. Kevin’s reaction to a family tragedy is to completely change his life; he even initially makes arrangements to leave Patrick behind. Is this adventurous? Impetuous? A healthy change of venue? An unhealthy type of avoidance?
4. Although In High Places is ostensibly a novel that is “about” Patrick, most people identify Kevin as their favorite character. Why do you think that is? Who in your life is most like Kevin?
5. How do you view Kevin’s and Patrick’s father-and-son relationship?
6. Patrick’s attraction to Rachel appears initially to be purely physical. It’s only later that this deepens. Is this a faithful depiction of how such things often happen in real life, or a flaw in Patrick’s character? Why?
7. Is Rachel totally feminine, totally a covert tomboy or something in between? Why?
8. When Rachel tells Patrick that she dresses extremely modestly to avoid upsetting others, is she being a hypocrite or a caring Christian? Can you support your opinion with a Biblical reference?
9. In the Gospels, Peter is called to follow Christ, he is sent out to heal the sick and cast our spirits, he walks on water, ultimately recognizes Jesus as the Christ, later disavows him, temporarily goes back to fishing after the Resurrection, and yet ultimately becomes a leader of the church. In what ways is Patrick like Peter?
10. When Patrick releases Rachel, he characterizes himself as “ignoble, selfish, and ingrate.” But do you think Rachel foresaw this when she decided to go with him to Toledo? What does this say about Patrick? What does it say about Rachel?
11. This novel spends most of its time on a single summer in a young man’s life, then it telescopes several months into eight pages, and compresses much of that character’s life into the remaining 13 pages. Yet this time compression doesn’t bother most readers, and in fact seems to “work” well for them. Did it do so for you? Why or why not?
12. Patrick truly seems to love Sarah (his wife). How is this possible given the amount of energy he has spent in his recollections of Rachel?
13. Have you ever lost loved ones and been uncertain as to their eternal fate? How does this affect your Christian walk?
14. Was this the ending that you wanted for this book? If not, are you still satisfied with it?
15. Is hope enough?
Please see also see the general discussion questions on this third-party website: http://www.readinggroupguides.com:80/no_guide/guide_christian_fiction.asp
(Posted April, 2008)
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