Author debuts first novel at book-signing event in Windham

Jennifer Dupree signs a copy of her first
published novel, The Miraculous Flight of
Owen Leach, during a book-signing event
on Saturday, June 4 at Sherman's Maine 
Coast Books in Windham.
PHOTO BY COLLETTE HAYES  

By Collette Hayes

What happens when a 19-year-old girl, alone and exhausted, follows a fleeting impulse and tosses her screaming infant son out a window? What happens if that baby is caught by a woman who is standing below looks up and reaches out? And what if the catcher's own fragile pregnancy ends, causing her to believe that the baby she caught is meant to be hers? 

On Saturday June 4, author Jennifer Dupree signed copies of her debut novel “The Miraculous Flight of Owen Leach’ at Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shop in the Windham Mall. The book is a gripping tale of what it means to be a “good” mother and who gets to decide.

Dupree, the Director of Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library in Lovell, is a freelance editor, and former bookstore owner. She earned a masters’ degree in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. Her work has appeared in Front Porch Review, The Masters Review, On the Rusk and other places.

She is the winner of the Writer’s Digest Fiction Contest for 2017, and both a winner and a finalist for Maine Literary Awards and is quite familiar with Windham having formerly worked at the Windham Public Library.

“The Miraculous Flight of Owen Leach, is my first novel,” said Dupree. “I began this book eight years ago as part of my master’s thesis program. All I had written up to this point was short fiction. When I started my thesis program, I thought now would be the time to write a novel because now would be the time that I would have help. 

“I didn’t have an idea for a novel, but soon after making the decision, I saw a news clipping about a woman who threw a baby out a window and he landed on a mattress,” Dupree said. “I thought I could complicate that story a bit more, one woman throws a baby out a window and another woman catches him. I really began thinking about these women. What happened in the woman’s life to make her throw her baby out a window, and what were the complicating factors in the woman’s life who catches him.”

Dupree’s writing career began at an early age. Recently, her mother gave her husband a huge box of her writings and included in the box were notes, stories and poems she had carefully saved from the time that Dupree could hold a pencil in her hand.

“When I was 10 years old, a friend of my mother’s gave me the book, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the second book in C.S. Lewis’s fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia,” said Dupree. “It was at that time I realized I wanted to be a writer. I was over the moon about the book. I sat down and basically plagiarized the entire book by recreating it and using my own characters.”

Becoming a published author takes persistence and determination, she said. Editors and publishers agree the odds of being published are bleak. Publishing houses only accept 1 to 2 percent of the manuscripts they receive and finding a literary agent to represent an author’s work is as challenging. Dupree said that she inquired with more than 80 different agents before finding one to represent her book.

“When I graduated in Creative Writing, I found an agent who loved the book, but was only willing to sell it to a large publishing house because selling it to a large publisher is the only way she could make money,” said Dupree. “We eventually went our separate ways but not long after, Apprentice House Press, a publisher based at Loyola University in Baltimore, Maryland offered to buy my book. I was thrilled.”

According to Dupree, if your long-term goal is to become a published author, the most important thing you need is to have at least one person in your life telling you not to give up.

“Publication isn’t a marker of talent,” said Dupree. “People that are very talented aren’t getting published. In the end, I think it’s a matter of persistence, determination, and hard work. If you’re putting together work with all your heart and generosity, it is going to find its market. Fill your life up with people that believe in you and it will keep you writing.” <