Today we’re happy to welcome back prolific award-winning author, intrepid adventurer and pie lover Candice Ransom to discuss her latest middle grade novel, Juneberry Blue (Peachtree, 2024), officially out next week.

Set in the tiny forgotten town of Morning Glory, Virginia (pop: 8), this beautifully crafted tale of magical realism centers around eleven-year-old Andie Jennings, who instead of inheriting her family’s unique ability to create life-changing recipes, discovers her special gift is being able to communicate with spirits.

If Andie and her brainiac friend Tanner can help the local ghosts at the abandoned Juneberry Blue soda factory ward off a shady property developer, gain access to a locked tower and unravel secrets surrounding the factory’s closing, they might be able to save their sleepy town. Reopening the factory would draw visitors to Morning Glory, generate business for her family’s struggling diner, and best of all, bring Andie’s father home for good from his truck-driving job.

A heartwarming, suspenseful story, Juneberry Blue is equal parts fairy tale, magic, mystery, and local history flavored with sly humor. Candice celebrates her love of small towns, rural settings, close knit communities, and the power of storytelling passed down through generations. Add a ghost cat, memorable characters, a sentient potted plant with attitude, a tiny terrarium, and cool animal guides for a thoroughly enchanting read. Oh, and did I mention the cathead biscuits and bacon, grilled pound cake, butterscotch pie, skillet fried potatoes, walnut brownies and fried bologna sandwiches? 😍

Our thanks to Candice for dropping by to tell us more and for sharing such wonderful personal photos.

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What initially sparked the idea for this novel? What did you enjoy most about writing it?

Book ideas for me begin with an image. For this book, it was seeing a cat surrounded by fireflies. I was teaching at Hollins University that summer and had come out of an evening lecture. A cat sat under a tree. Haloed around his head blinked fireflies. The cat didn’t move, just enjoyed the summer evening. That image wound up in a version of the book. So did a cat on his ninth life with a mission. Both were taken out. There is a cat in the novel, a different cat on a different mission.

Once I figured it out (and that took years!), I most enjoyed using a fairy tale theme throughout the book. Of course, I didn’t just pick a fairy tale and work it into the story. I went to my collection of fairy tale books. I studied these scholarly texts so I could better understand how the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty would impact the plot and how Andie changed it slightly to suit her own retelling to her sister.

Tell us a little about your research. Anything especially unusual or surprising happen in the process?

Research! I decided early on there would be an abandoned soft drink factory that once made a soft drink–and only that soft drink–that made people happy. The workers loved working there. The Juneberry Blue factory opened in 1925. I wrote an entire history of the town, including how the town’s druggist created Juneberry Blue (in the early 1900s and even before, pharmacists usually mixed carbonated soft drinks as medicinal).

This entailed a deep dive into the history of formulas, bottles, labels, the caps, naming the soft drinks. In the end, I had a 3-inch binder crammed with information, including the floor plans of a Texas soft drink factory built in 1925. When Tanner and Andie walk through the three floors and examine the vats and machinery, I knew exactly what they were looking at and where they were.

I also researched morning glories and juneberries (service berries). I gathered folklore and superstitions from my family and from the Blue Ridge Mountain region. I tried to use the language since regional expressions and colloquialisms are dying out.

The name Unlucky in Love for the diner came to me instantly. I love diners and on back road travels, my husband and I seek mom-and-pop eating places where the first course of that day’s special might be cole slaw. Diners tend to serve modest homestyle cooking. We may pretend we love kale salad with pine nuts but we really crave fried canned salmon cakes and cornbread. I document those diner experiences by taking notes and taking pictures. All of which came in handy. 

How did you come up with the Juneberry Blue soft drink? Why juneberries, and are they a fruit you’ve long been familiar with?  

Juneberry Blue is based loosely on a famous Southern soft drink called Cheerwine (it’s quite addicting!). Cheerwine is made in North Carolina and comes in bottles, cans, and plastic bottles and there’s a diet version. I decided Juneberry Blue would keep its pure version in glass bottles–no cans, no plastic, no diet version. That was the soft drink’s downfall . . . it didn’t keep up with the times.

Initially, I thought the soda was made with blackberries, but that was too common. I stumbled on service berries (more research!). The trees grow in the woods and I’d seen some in flower in early spring. The trees are also called juneberry, shadbush, and other names. Juneberry Blue sounded like summer in a bottle.

I see a lot of you in Andie Jennings. Do you believe in ghosts, and have you ever had a paranormal experience?

I don’t believe in ghosts, though I’ve had some paranormal dealings. Because I grew up on a Civil War camp, and roamed nearby Manassas battlefields, and currently live near the site of five battles, I’ve sensed presences–things at unrest–when I’m alone outside and it’s dusk. I believe the land holds tragedy and tried to convey that to the reader through Andie. The area where I set Morning Glory was the site of a cavalry skirmish. It is said the horses were so frightened in the woods that their hoofprints could still be seen a hundred years later.

Please elaborate on the role food plays in the book. Were you purposely trying to torture the reader by mentioning so many tempting homemade dishes? 😀

I’d been wanting to write a diner-based story for years! Many years ago, when I was writing new titles for the Boxcar Children series, my editor told me that it was important for the kids to take a break from sleuthing and eat. Like most Virginians, I love to eat! Some of my fondest childhood memories were going to the funerals of my mother’s elderly relatives. The feast afterwards! Those Shenandoah Valley cooks outdid themselves!

Unlucky in Love offers the foods I knew and love. Cathead biscuits is a quaint name for extra-large biscuits and became the diner’s staple. What diner would be worth its bacon grease without homemade pies? The pie-dough roll-ups came straight from my childhood kitchen. My mother baked pies regularly and with the extra dough, she sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and rolled them into crescents. I burned my fingers many times trying to eat them straight from the oven!

Is Andie’s grandmother NeeNee based on your mom, who was a self-taught Southern cook? Which of her dishes do you especially miss?

The only cook I saw in daily practice was my mother. She didn’t just fix meals for her family, but also was a school cafeteria cook, back when lunches cost 25 cents and all the food was home-cooked. Real turkeys, fresh vegetables, a baker devoted to breads and desserts. Nothing frozen or pre-packaged. After a day in an elementary school kitchen, cooking for 350 kids, my mother rode the school bus home with me and started on our supper, still wearing her white nylon uniform.

We grew a huge garden and kept two hogs to slaughter in the fall (that part I didn’t like). I miss my mother’s pork loin roasts. I miss new peas in cream sauce. I miss her fried squash, dripped in milk, dredged in cornmeal, then fried in Crisco in her trusty iron skillet. Not yellow squash, but pattypan squash, bigger and tastier. I miss her chocolate icebox pies and her bread pudding, nothing like you get today, crispier, not so sweet or custardy. I miss her cupcakes, especially at Easter. She’d dye coconut green to make nests on top and add three jelly bean eggs. I miss her Christmas fudge and homemade peppermints. With this list, you’d never believe I was once a picky eater!

Aside from Andie, who’s your favorite character in the story and why? How did you come up with the idea for Priscilla?

I love NeeNee, of course, because she is a combination of my mother and a woman who ran the b&b in Colonial Beach where I would spend a week writing. Her breakfasts were to die for! I love Sweet Lundy because he is the wise council among the residents. There was a little pushback about not making him “too old” but I fought for him. The elderly have much to share with young people.

Priscilla came from a philodendron that I had in a book that was never published. When I was a kid, women prized their philodendrons that grew so long the vine wrapped around the table the pot sat on and the leaves were dusted and polished. When I named the town Morning Glory, it seemed natural to have a real morning glory play some role. Priscilla wound her way into the story. She’s everybody’s favorite character.

I like that Andie makes story boxes for her little sister Bunch. Did you make a special story box for this book? Did you make them during your childhood?

I made a story box for my niece when she was little. I babysat her on weekends. One weekend I took an old shoebox and colored it to look like a witch house. I gave it to Susan and we worked on it together, decorating the inside and making cardboard furniture. As we worked, I told a rambling story about the witch who lived there. 

During the pandemic, I was desperate to create something. I ordered scrapbook papers and made what I call a story box. It’s basically a diorama.

Tell us about the online revision journal you made for Juneberry Blue.

After I’d finished the first draft of Juneberry Blue, I sent it to my agent. She suggested I cut it down (it was very long!) and make changes. I needed to think about how I’d revise, so I created an online document in which I reviewed many aspects of the novel. I began with the location of Morning Glory, writing in great detail about the Blue Ridge Mountains, how they came to be, the geology, the longitude and latitude, the animals, the history, including Native Americans and early European settlers.

I went to my personal library–books in every room except the laundry room!–to find quotes, to reinforce my theme, to better understand what I wanted to say and get across to the reader. I scoured my photos for representative images. I LOVED making this document. It’s called “The Book of Morning Glory ~ History and Notes.” As I revised, I’d come across another problem and solve it in the document. It served as a sounding board, a place to gather my thoughts in a project that had taken years, all in one spot. I had all 30 pages color printed and sent a copy to my agent. The document has since helped me create an educator’s guide for Juneberry Blue and the book trailer.

Please share a favorite comfort food recipe and provide a little backstory about it.

My mother rarely used recipes or “receipts” as she called them. She made food out of air, it seemed. The only recipes I have of hers are from other people. Of everything she made, I loved her egg custard pie best. It was simple and the ultimate comfort food. I don’t have her recipe, but here’s a story.

My niece Susan lived with my mother for a while, bringing her kitten, Gracie. My mother made an egg custard pie and set it on the windowsill to cool. While we three chatted in the living room, little Gracie was methodically licking the custard from the crust. When we found her, her belly was round! She had eaten every morsel of the custard except one pie-shaped wedge. My mother was ready to throw the pie out, but I shamelessly cut around Gracie’s nibbling and ate that piece!

What are you working on next?

I’m taking a break from novels right now to work on nonfiction projects. Juneberry Blue was a tough book to write because it spanned a long period of figuring out, the pandemic in which I got Covid three times and had Long Covid for an entire year, and caring for my sister who died of cancer. The book was written twice by me, revised twice for my agent, and rewritten four times for my editor.

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JUNEBERRY BLUE
written by Candice Ransom
published by Peachtree Publishing Co.
Middle Grade Novel for ages 8-12, 304 pp.
**On shelves June 18, 2024**

💙 Enjoy this lovely book trailer created by author Tracey Kyle:

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🥧 SPECIAL BOOK GIVEAWAY 🐱

The publisher is generously offering a brand new hardcover copy of Juneberry Blue for one lucky Alphabet Soup reader. For a chance to win, please leave a comment at this post no later than midnight (EDT) Sunday, June 30, 2024. You may also enter by sending an email with JUNEBERRY in the subject line to: readermail (at) jamakimrattigan (dot) com. Giveaway open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only. Winner will be notified by email the first week of July. Good luck!!

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🎉 CONGRATULATIONS, CANDICE! 💙

Thank you for writing so many fantastic books!

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*Unless otherwise noted, all photos in this post copyright © 2024 Candice Ransom.

**Copyright © 2024 Jama Rattigan of Jama’s Alphabet Soup. All rights reserved.