Despite The Kingdom of Childhood being her third novel, 34-year-old Rebecca Coleman is far from jaded. She describes everything that's happened in the past few months as "the powerball jackpot of getting a book published." After her new novel was named a semifinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, she found agent Stephany Evans, president of FinePrint, who sold it to Mira, which is putting a lot of muscle behind it, including a 50-foot banner in the main hall at the Javits Center.
As for the plot, it came to her while she was doing laundry and heard a newscast of what has become an all-too familiar story: a school teacher seducing a student. "I really wanted to put a different twist on it," says Coleman, who researched female teachers who have sex with male students. "A lot of the women were lonely, in their 30s and 40s, and going through a crisis. Many were victims of childhood sexual abuse."
To keep her main character, 43-year-old Judy McFarland, from being too sympathetic when she starts an affair with 16-year-old Zach, Coleman built in a different set of childhood traumas. Then she ratcheted the tension by placing them in a Waldorf School, which places a premium on nurturing children. Coleman is also careful to tell the sex scenes from Zach's point of view, never Judy's or that of an omniscient narrator. "There's a lot of sex in the book, for sure," acknowledges Coleman. "Because this is a story about a sexual affair between two people who shouldn't be together, the reader has to understand why they are together, the lust. It's one of the places where I felt I pushed the boundaries."
There are some parallels to another story about two people who shouldn't be together, middle-aged Humbert Humbert and 12-year-old Dolores Haze. "Lolita is one of my favorite books," says Coleman. "In it one major element that's missing, not that it would fit with that story, is you never know what's going on from Dolores's perspective. So when I started this story, I knew I wanted to put in the point of view of the victim."
A mother of four, Coleman has only one concern about the book. "People tend to conflate the protagonist with the author. That's pretty scary with this book."
Coleman will be signing books twice during the show: today, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., and at the Harlequin booth (4638) tomorrow, 10–10:45 p.m.