Author Rio Youers is launching a new book next week.
The Forgotten Girl, which took the Elora author about 18 months to complete, is now ready to be released to the public at a launch party on June 13 at the Elora Brewing Company.
The novel tells the story of New Jersey street performer Harvey Anderson, who discovers his girlfriend has erased his memory.
However, he still has feelings for her and goes on a search for the girlfriend he can’t remember, coming across political corruption, manipulation and other challenges along the way.
“One of the things about The Forgotten Girl, which I think will make it appeal to a broader audience is … the protagonist … Harvey Anderson, he’s kind of an everyday dude,” Youers said in an interview.
“He’s not ex-military, he’s not a ninja, he doesn’t have seven different black belts in martial arts. He’s a vegetarian street performer.
“He could be your brother, he could be your son, he could be your best pal and so we become invested in him emotionally because we recognize ourselves or the people we love in Harvey.”
The idea for The Forgotten Girl comes from Youers’ long fascination with memory.
“I always knew I was going to write a book about memories someday,” he said.
“I just love the idea that we can remember certain things and some things, even if they happened like last week, we can’t really remember them.”
Though he had to do research to write about memory, it was the American political scene that he researched most.
“You don’t have to sort of store [research] up before hand and then go. You find yourself sort of hitting this point in the book where you’re like, ‘Oh I better find out more about that’ and off you go looking for it,” Youers explained.
The Forgotten Girl is part of a two-book deal Youers was given by St. Martin’s, an imprint of Macmillan Books in New York. So, before he even began writing, he had a rough idea the direction the story would take. However, he said there was a lot he didn’t know about the plot before it was complete and it “very much steered itself in its own direction.
“For instance I had an idea for how the book would end, but I didn’t really know the details until I got to the end myself and in fact the ending of the book was very different from the end that I had in mind,” he said.
“It’s a really fascinating thing when the story starts to steer itself and you as the author, you’re just kind of along for the ride.”
Youers is holding his book launch at the Elora Brewing Company on June 13 at 7pm.
“The launch is open to everybody and it’s the Tuesday before Father’s Day so if you want to get your dad a cool present get him a personally-signed novel,” Youers said. “That would be pretty cool.”
While the book sells for $38.99 retail, purchasers will receive a 25% discount when they buy it from Roxanne’s Reflections Book and Card Shop at the launch.
After June 13 The Forgotten Girl will be available at Roxanne’s as well as larger outlets such as Indigo, Amazon and other online retailers.
For more information visit rioyouers.com.
