Coming May 11, 2027 from heliotrope Books
CARSON McCLINTOCK IS NOT DEAD YET
It’s 2035. Healthcare in America is broken, the social safety net is barely there, and the youngest Baby Boomers are pushing eighty. Using a windfall from his late media mogul father, aging erstwhile circuit court judge Carson McClintock III buys a dilapidated trailer park along an island beach west of Portland, Oregon, and starts a commune for a small group of his indigent geriatric peers. At All That Matters, the arts are a priority, ADA-approved walking trails are plentiful, and compassionate hearts bring meals, music, books, and bedside encouragement to the most enfeebled residents, easing their transitions to the next world—all completely free of charge. McClintock confides his dreams and fears to his wise Hindi landlord, Rohan Talwar, and his formidable-yet-fun love interest Avi Martindale. An island-dwelling great horned owl, Artemus, opens the story with a consequential reconnaissance trip into the big city, where downtown streets have been ravaged by disease and sudden death. With democracy itself continuing to threaten suicide, the friends deftly steer ATM forward even as fate takes them on surprising and circuitous turns toward the finish lines of their own earthly journeys.
Oregon author and writing teacher Joanna Rose says of Nancy's newest novel: “An exuberant engagement with life, death, and possibilities. Carson McClintock is a dreamer and a doer who, along with a truly rocking bunch of fellow senior citizens, is creating an end-of-life utopia on a little island outside of Portland Oregon, and, in their quiet way, changing the world around them. Nancy Townsley’s storytelling is whip smart and quick, funny and tragic, mystical and earthy. There is hope here, and great heart.”
A vibrant, socially engaged work of fiction, Carson McClintock Is Not Dead Yet examines end-of-life realities and choices in near-future America, taking an unflinching look at the challenges of geriatric care, wrenching family decisions, and what is still possible when people come together around a singular compassionate goal.
Sunshine Girl
Eliza Pearl learns the journalism trade from her father, who leads a rural Oregon newsroom. When he develops a mysteriously debilitating condition and flees to a healing center, Eliza and her mother move to Alaska to start fresh. After college, Eliza takes a job at Juneau’s largest daily, working for her father’s former protégé, Mina Breckenridge. Together they navigate sea changes in their industry: The rise of the Internet, the proliferation of social media, politicians’ “enemies of the people” accusations, the murders of journalists across the globe, and violent bloodshed closer to home. Trying to prove herself at The Tribune, Eliza becomes obsessed with a feature story about charismatic parents whose adopted daughter is a flute prodigy, a story Mina inexplicably kills. As fact gets sifted from fiction, she uncovers a decades-old reality that threatens to upend her relationship with Mina and tarnish her memories of her father. Sunshine Girl, a page-turning tale of family secrets set in a world of truth-telling, explores the art of regional journalism through the lens of an intrepid reporter who discovers more than she expects—once she starts investigating her own life.
Published by Heliotrope Books of New York City in April 2025, Sunshine Girl chronicles the evolution of the newspaper industry from Nixon to Biden through the lens of a multigenerational family saga.
