As North Atlantic Books enters its 40th year, the Berkeley Calif., company founded by writers Richard Grossinger and Lindy Hough, finds itself with one of its bestselling books, When the Game Stands Tall: The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football’s Longest Winning Streak by Neil Hayes, as the basis of a motion picture to be released by Sony Pictures August 22, and one if its bestselling nonfiction authors, Patricia Cori, adapting her debut novel, The Emissary, for the silver screen. But publicist Julia Kent says the Hollywood fanfare has not changed the essential mission of the press, which emigrated west in the late ’70s and carved out a niche publishing books that promote “personal, spiritual, and planetary transformation” in areas that include martial arts, medicine, homeopathy, archeo-astronomy, Eastern religion, diet and natural foods, and more.
“It’s a pretty big umbrella,” says Kent, who grew up in a community near the Catholic high school featured in When the Game Stands Tall, which is about the football team’s loss in 2004 that ended its 151-game, 12-year winning streak—the longest winning streak in any sport, anywhere. North Atlantic’s movie tie-in edition features a foreword by John Madden and blurbs from actors starring in the film, Laura Dern (Blue Velvet; Jurassic Park) and Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ; Person of Interest).
Patricia Cori, whose fans call her a “real-life female Indiana Jones,” for her work in her nonprofit Save Earth’s Oceans and for her nonfiction bestsellers, Atlantis Rising, The Cosmos of Soul, and The Starseed Dialogs, said she had not intended to write a novel at first. She had started a screenplay and when North Atlantic asked to read it, the staff talked her into writing a novelization as well. Now The Emissary is the first book in a Cori trilogy.
“It was sort of backwards to how it usually happens in the literary-to-film world,” Cori says. “While the screenplay was already being signed by a Hollywood producer, I feverishly wrote the novel and submitted it eight months before deadline. The enthusiasm and excitement around the book has rippled through the entire team and we are enjoying a remarkable launch! It is our book—not just mine.” She will be signing The Emissary at her publishers booth today (2951) at 2 p.m.
