Nathan Bransford - The Forums

In the spring of 1938, Thomas Kelman, eleven months, dies in his parents' isolated farm home in northern Saskatchewan. Paralyzed with grief, his mother, Rebecca, cannot find the will to leave her bed. She wonders how her husband, Gus, could have walked away from the grave and back into a life that ...

There is A LOT going on in the brief summary in your query. This story feels like the kind of thing epics are made of. So I, too, am amazed at the word count. Perhaps the query doesn't quite reflect it accurately, but from my perspective, it doesn't feel like you have a strong hero - just a bunch of...

Thanks for all of the replies!

And to answer one of the questions asked, Decoration Day was the predecessor to Memorial Day, and was always on May 30 regardless of what day of the week May 30 fell on. Since it's not clear, maybe I should just say 1925 and not worry about the Decoration Day part?

I've been waffling on the query method. I follow several agent blogs, and they all say that narrative non-fiction should be treated like fiction when querying. Some blogs say narrative non-fiction is exclusively memoir; others say that it's anything written in a novel-like format.

What do you think?

Apparently, I was on a distant planet and didn't realize Nathan had added forums to his site until he mentioned it the other day! As a newbie, I'm not sure how much I can offer, but I promise I'll be as helpful as I can when it comes to feedback. In the meanwhile, I would really appreciate getting a...