Good Luck, Good Book, St. Jude

This post was written on February 19, 2016.

When my novel Each Vagabond By Name won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize, it was like leaping from a familiar pond into a clear, sparkling new sea. I’d been close to contest-winning, and the subsequent publication, before--many times, in fact. My novel was a veteran bridesmaid, accustomed to standing by in her ill-fitting dress while yet another lovely bride said “I do.” I’d come to expect how it would all pan out: submission, finalist, *thisclose*, and then another door closed as someone else’s book went on to a happy marriage with publication.

But something felt different this time, when I submitted to this particular contest. First, I learned of the contest from a sideways route, through an online group of women writers, instead of the contest listings I usually perused. Stumbling on the call for submissions felt lucky somehow. Second, the contest was the first held by the UNO Publishing Lab, and graduate students would have a crucial role in the selection, editing, and promotion of the winner. I thought students might be a little more open to my quiet story--less constricted by commercial requirements and expectations. And I loved the idea of a group of aspiring writers getting behind the winning novel to get it into the world. It wasn’t a standard publication route for a first novel, but it was an appealing prospect for my book.

And finally, there was St. Jude. Patron saint of lost causes. It’d be hard to find a more fitting guardian for my eternal bridesmaid of a book, but I’d never thought to pray to him with any of my other flirtations as a finalist. Praying to the saints isn’t really part of my regular life, except for the occasional prayer to St. Anthony when I can’t find my keys. But the day I found out I was a finalist, a distant cousin I haven’t spoken to or seen in decades mentioned St. Jude in a Facebook post. Of course: of course St. Jude. I Googled around for a novena (nine prayers for a particular intention) and printed the prayers out on scrap paper.

The day after I’d prayed the eighth prayer, I found out I won. My book would be published, lost cause no more.

I’m not giving St. Jude all the credit, of course. So much more went into this win than a selective Catholic’s random prayers to a quirky saint. For one thing, the UNO Publishing Lab’s group of students couldn’t have been more perfectly receptive to my story, with several of them from Pennsylvania (where my novel is set) and one of them of Roma descent (among my novel’s main characters are itinerant thieves the fearful, isolated locals call “gypsies”). For another thing, I’ve always believed in my book. It had come close before; this was certainly a matter of being the right book with the right readers at the right time. The stars were finally aligned. I didn't really need St. Jude’s intercession.

And yet. The part of me that traffics in imagination, and mystery, can’t discount St. Jude completely. I was focusing on other writing; I'd accepted that this story would probably always be close to my heart but absent from the world. Until the perfect confluence of luck and readers and maybe a teeny bit of saintly help plucked it from spinsterhood and made it a bride.