True Stories at the Smoky View

2017 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Best Regional Fiction: South

“This debut author has a knack for storytelling and great characters.”
—Booklist

After attending the funeral of her estranged friend Skip in Knoxville, Tennessee, Vrai (short for Vraiment), a forty-something art history librarian with sons of her own, rescues ten-year-old Jonathan, who has been abandoned with no shoes in the funeral home parking lot. The Blizzard of 1993 strands this unlikely duo at the Smoky View Motel, where, motivated in part by the unsolved murders of Jonathan’s parents, they begin to uncover the truth about Skip’s death. With elements of mystery and intrigue, True Stories at the Smoky View is primarily a novel about relationships: the love Vrai feels for her husband and sons, all of whom have left home; her friendship with Skip, which she begins to see in a new light; and her deepening bond with Jonathan. For Vrai and Jonathan, this is a story of mutual rescue—one that results in new lives for them both.

Author: Jill McCroskey Coupe

Publication Date: April 5, 2016

Categories: Award-Winning, Fiction, Spring 2016, Women’s Fiction

Description
About the Author

Description

2017 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Best Regional Fiction: South

“This debut author has a knack for storytelling and great characters.”
—Booklist

“With intricate story lines involving murder, library research, road trips, and [a] quest for justice, and motifs including motherhood, love, marriage, betrayal, and true friendship, there is something for everyone in this light/dark Southern novel by a writer to watch.”
—Library Journal

“True Stories at the Smoky View is a riveting literary mystery you won’t soon forget. Jill McCroskey Coupe handles this complex tale of troubled romance, broken families, redeeming friendship, and inexplicable evil with intelligence, grace, and grit. This exhilarating debut novel brims with honesty, charm, heart, and good humor.”
—John Dufresne, author of I Don’t Like Where This is Going

“Intrigue abounds in True Stories at the Smoky View, but this wonderful first novel is above all testament to Eudora Welty’s observation that “all serious daring starts from within.” With an abundance of wit and accuracy of feeling, Jill Coupe beautifully charts both the complexities of loyalty and the internal growth of Vrai Lynde, her central character, and she does so in clear, precise prose.”
—Jane Brox, author of Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light

“Skillfully written, with careful attention to detail and a liberal sprinkling of humor, this novel by a librarian and with a librarian protagonist combines mystery and suspense with a woman’s journey toward fulfillment in middle age.”
—Teddy Jones, author of Jackson’s Pond, Texas

“This is a thoroughly absorbing book that I found difficult to put down. The personalities Coupe conjured stayed with me long after I finished reading. The writing is beautiful: spare and funny. A most enjoyable read.”
—Maureen Beck, former Director of Library Services, Stevenson University

“True Stories at the Smoky View examines the mysteries and complexities of family, friendship, love and romance, and evil both grandiose and petty. In Vrai Lynde, in particular, Coupe has given us a vivid portrait of a complicated woman torn in many directions by her loves and her loyalties.”
—Smoky Mountain News

About the Author

Jill McCroskey Coupe’s first job was gathering (collating) in her father’s printing plant in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. A former librarian at Johns Hopkins University, she has an MFA in Fiction from North Carolina’s Warren Wilson College, in the heart of the Blue Ridge. The Southern Appalachians always feel like home to her, but so does Baltimore, where she now lives. She’s hard at work on her next novel, a series of linked stories.