Salem author's 'Lace Reader' puts the city in the center of its msytery

The book “The Lace Reader” was inspired in part by a piece of lace Brunonia Barry’s grandmother gave her years ago that was made by Salem nuns during the Depression.

Throughout her life Barry treasured the lace, packing it carefully when she moved and keeping it always on her bedside table. One night about eight years ago, during a time she and her husband were renovating their house, Barry had a dream about the lace.

“I dreamed I was looking through [it] through a wall we were going to demolish and saw a field of horses,” she says. “I woke up thinking, what does this mean? The contractor came in to demolish the wall and he said, “I hate this old horsehair plaster. It gets in the air and you can’t get it out…”

That got Barry, whose real name is Sandy, thinking, what if lace could act as a psychic medium like a crystal ball? What began as short story grew into a novel that Barry worked at for nearly five years while helping her husband Gary run their software gaming business. Finally, one day she told her husband she wanted to devote herself full time to her novel.

“He said when an Irish woman tells you something, you have to listen,” she jokes.

Later it was Gary who encouraged Barry to self publish the book. For years the couple had been running SmartGames, their software company, marketing games to large distributors. Barry jokes, the couple approached publishing her novel with the mantra “How hard could it be?”

 They paid to print 2,000 copies, dubbing their company Flap Jacket Press, and hired Marblehead based book publicist Kelley and Hall, who sent books to trade magazines such as Publisher’s Weekly. The strategy worked. Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a glowing review and, weeks later, books began flying off the shelves. From there it was only a matter of months before big name publishers were wooing the couple. In the end Barry sold “The Lace Reader” and a second novel to HarperCollins. Barry declined to give a price tag, but sources say she received a $2 million deal.

These days the 57-year-old Marblehead native, who’s known as Sandy to family and friends, is busy fielding calls from Hollywood movie agents and the media. Earlier this week in an interview with WCVB’s “Chronicle” at her Salem home, the first-time author was amazingly at ease.

“I keep wondering when I’m going to wake up,” she smiled, adding that readers are beginning to recognize her on the streets of Salem.

Though her author debut is coming somewhat late in life, Brunonia Barry is no stranger to the literary world. After studying writing at Green Mountain College in Vermont and the University of New Hampshire, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked as a script reader. Seven years ago after returning to the East Coast she worked for the Lexington-based publisher of the preteen-geared Beacon Street Girls series as a ghostwriter, while working on “The Lace Reader” on the side.

Set in Salem, “The Lace Reader” draws on many of the city’s historical sites as a rich backdrop. Towner Whitney, the quirky main character, returns home when her aunt, a psychic who uses lace as a fortune telling medium, disappears. While helping solve the mystery of her aunt’s disappearance, Towner comes to terms with her own troubled past, surrounded by interesting characters such as a radical fundamentalist preacher, an abused teenage girl and an herbalist witch.

The city of Salem plays a major role in the book, with sites such as Red’s Sandwich shop, the First Unitarian Church and the Dairy Witch ice cream shop all making guest appearances. Barry, who like Towner returned home after many years spent in California, says she finds Salem has a fantasy quality that lent itself well to her book.

“It’s not quite realistic,” she says. “You come here and see Bridget Bishop being tried, all these skits going on, and you think this is an unusual city. In a very nice way … I think it’s fascinating.”

These days Barry’s love for the Witch City is being returned ten-fold. The city’s tourism office, Destination Salem, has joined forces with HarperCollins in creating a map of sites listed in the book to distribute at local attractions. Kate Fox, executive director of Destination Salem, said the book would provide the city with a chance to win over a new audience.

“It gives the city the opportunity to educate people who want to see the city through ‘The Lace Reader,’ but then we can say, look at the First Church, the architecture… It’s a great opportunity to tell Salem’s story.”

Fox says that Salem Trolley has a Lace Reader tour in the works, and many local restaurants are already brainstorming Lace Reader-themed names for entrees. And down at Derby Wharf at Artemisia Botanicals, a shop that sells herbs and offers tarot readings, several employees are attempting to learn how to read lace, a concept which Barry says didn’t exist before her book, according to her research.

“Lace is another tool like tarot cards or runes,” said Teri Kalgren, store owner, who says a good psychic can use almost anything as a medium for reading people’s futures.

These days Barry has given up the software business and devoted herself fulltime to writing.”[‘The Lace Reader’] has changed everything,” she says. “I can just write forever, I hope.”

On July 29, the new, soft-cover edition of “The Lace Reader” is being launched at The House of Seven Gables, after which Barry will begin a five-month national book tour. Meanwhile, Barry has begun her second novel, also set in Salem, this one focused on the city’s maritime history. With so much here, she says, why set a book anywhere else?

“You’ve got the old Salemites, the historical society,” she says. “The new people moving into town, the artists, the Wiccans, the entrepreneurial spirit based on the tourist trade set up by the dark history ... I just think it’s wonderful …”

Salem Gazette