Much of the inspiration for the setting of Henderson native Nathan Gower’s debut novel, “The Act of Disappearing,” is inspired by his hometown.
Though it’s called Gray Station in the novel, local readers will find descriptions of the town familiar. For example, a rusted railroad bridge spanning across the Ohio River plays a particularly important part in the book.
“To be clear, it’s not Henderson. It’s Gray Station. But… it’s Henderson,” Gower said to audience chuckles.
Like other places in fiction, this town is based on what Gower knows—Henderson, where he lived until he went away to college—while also taking some literary license. So, not every description matches the town exactly.
Now a professor at Campbellsville University, Gower was in town Monday night to speak at the Henderson County Public Library. The Pittsburg Tank and Tower suite was filled; by the library’s count, 93 people came to hear Gower speak.
He was helped by local author, Joey Goebel, who also teaches English at Henderson County High School. Both Gower and Goebel are graduates of Spalding University’s Master of Fine Arts in creative writing program.
Goebel was the emcee of the evening. He described Gower’s prose as “eloquent” with many lines that read like poetry. And yet, his novel is a page-turner, too, Goebel said.
To this Gower said his editors are marketing it as upmarket fiction, which they say is “literary fiction that people will actually buy.”
Gower also writes about mental health issues and has a female protagonist featured in almost half of the book. Both, he said, he had to get right. Regarding the female voice, he said he at first wrote that character as a man, but it didn’t work and he knew the character needed to be female, something he didn’t know if he could pull off.
But when editors in his publishing house—all women—read the book and had no objections and outside sensitivity readers read the book and had no objections, he knew he’d got it right, he said.
“The Act of Disappearing” was published just last month by Mira, an imprint of HarperCollins.
