Hardcover $34.95
ISBN: 978-0-9819153-2-6
Trade Paperback $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-9819153-3-3
Kindle $5.95
ISBN: 978-0-9819153-4-0
Nook $5.95
ISBN: 978-0-9819153-5-7
iPad $5.95
ISBN: 978-0-9819153-6-4
About the Book
“What will be, will be,” grownups sagely tell Miss Virginia Pettingill three years after surviving the flu epidemic and WWI. But as much as she loves Gloucester, Massachusetts, the short, precocious school girl sees bigotry, bullies, sexism and pollution all around her, and she is determined to make things better. So Virginia begins writing a weekly journal of what seventh grade is like for a single child raised to be talented and “ladylike” by her suffragette mother, and to hunt, play baseball and smoke cigars by her doctor father. Aided by her best friend, Tibby Bloomberg, and the boys from her neighborhood baseball team, Virginia spends the year using creativity, skill, determination, and friendships to change things for the better in America’s busiest fishing port.
About the Author
Gilbert Mansergh is a prolific non-fiction author, syndicated film columnist, NY Times affiliated movie blogger, and producer/host of Word By Word: Conversations With Writers radio show on Sonoma County’s NPR station, KRCB-FM. The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill is his fictionalized account of true stories told to him by his mother of her formative years. Learn more about Gil at: http://www.gilmansergh.com/
Praise for The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill
This book is like stepping into a classic Saturday Evening Post cover, or a painting by Andrew Wyeth: a lost America brought to breathing life with a loving and assured hand. It’s a rare novel that manages to combine a vivid world view, an exquisite glimpse into an earlier time, and a narrative voice that’s as clear and consistent as it is engaging. To find that mixture in a first novel is nearly unique in my experience as a reader. With The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingil, first-time novelist Gilbert Mansergh has pulled all that off, and more.”
─ Deborah Grabien, author of The Haunted Ballad series and the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
“A year with Miss Virginia Pettingill in the early 1920’s is richly layered with historical details that paint a setting for us to watch this amazing seventh grader learn to walk her own fine line between her prophetic abilities and her growing up in a quickly changing world for women. Guided by the “rules” of the boys who teach her to box, pal around and have fun, Virginia learns the rules for life: keep the gang’s secrets; never lie to the gang; and most important of all, be useful and earn your place through blood, sweat and tears.”
─ Teri Sloat, author of the There Was An Old Lady… and There Was An Old Man… series and the Farmer Brown series
“Talk about truth in advertising! The Marvelous Journals of Miss Virginia Pettingill is marvelous indeed. As is Virginia herself. Narrators don’t come more charming than the precocious Miss Pettingill. Seeing the world through her sharp young eyes is a treat readers won’t soon forget. “
— Steve Hockensmith, author of Holmes on the Range series