Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 14, 1992 TAG: 9201140127
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Kevin Kittredge
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
`SAMPLER' IS A WARM SURPRISE
"A Warm Hearth Sampler" has proved to be one hot biscuit.The collection of writings by the senior citizens in poet Nikki Giovanni's writing group was released last month. It quickly landed on the best-seller list at Blacksburg's Books Strings & Things.
"It's been consistently selling well," said BS&T manager Steve Kark.
How well?
The week before Christmas, "Sampler" sales at BS&T beat out such national mega-sellers as Robert Fulghum's "Uh-Oh" and Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" - not to mention the latest adventures of comic strip heavyweights Calvin and Hobbes, Kark said.
In addition, "Sampler" sales that week ran neck-and-neck with James Michener's autobiography, "The World is My Home."
Each sold seven copies.
Hot local sales are unlikely to make anyone rich, of course. But the area's interest in the 140-page collection of essays, poetry and personal reminiscence has turned some heads - the publisher's included.
Published by Blacksburg's Pocahontas Press, the "Sampler" - its full title is "Appalachian Elders - A warm Hearth Sampler" - soon may require a second printing, said Pocahontas publisher Mary Holliman.
"Yes, I am surprised," she said of the sales. Though most of the books have been sold locally, she said, one was sold in Alaska.
They're going for $9.75, and the profits will help finance a second book.
Holliman said some national publicity is expected soon, which could generate sales outside the New River Valley. Articles are expected in Blue Ridge Country and SELF Magazine in New York, either about the group or about leader Giovanni, a poet and Virginia Tech professor.
About 300 of the 500 books in the "Sampler's" first printing have been sold, Holliman said.
Not bad for a book published only a month ago by a group composed mostly of first-time writers in their 80s and 90s. The elderly authors live at Blacksburg's Warm Hearth Village Retirement Community, where Giovanni runs her writer's workshop.
The "Sampler" also includes an essay about the workshop written by Giovanni, as well as an introduction by Tech English teacher Cathee Dennison. Dennison assists Giovanni at the workshop.
"You expect when you've got that many authors [20, including the two workshop leaders] that the families are going to buy copies," Holliman said. "But we've had a lot of interest, in a sense more than you would expect."
BS&T in Blacksburg had sold out its first 18 copies by last week, but more were expected shortly, Kark said.
"I think it's a good book of good stories," said Kark. "I enjoyed the story about a gentleman driving his first car. . . . I think it's an interesting perspective on the past."
The idea for a writing workshop at the retirement community came from Joyce Hoerner, Warm Hearth's administrator until her retirement in 1990.
"Reminiscence is a very good experience for them. It brings validation to their lives; it brings closure to certain aspects of it," Hoerner has said. "It's a warm feeling to recall pleasant memories."
The "Sampler" is full of those - from Eillison Smyth's recollections of Ellett's Drug Store in Blacksburg to the late Zeke Moore's close-to-famous "My First Car."
If there are few great prose stylists in the softbound book, it is chock full of personal history, humor and hard experience.
Ruby Smith Wright, for one, writes of trying to repair the old tenant house on the little farm her family had bought in the middle of winter:
"The weather was so cold, we couldn't do anything about the leaky roof. Many nights we went to sleep by the music of the water from the leaking roof dripping in buckets, pans, and tubs by our beds . . ."