Tracy’s sixth book in seven years, Cooper’s Hawk: The Remembering, releases Jan. 20 from PipeVine Press, the new traditional imprint of 30-year-old custom publisher, Warren Publishing, located in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Cooper’s Hawk will be the first title published by PipeVine Press. “It’s quite an honor to hear you have the book someone’s been waiting to publish,” Tracy said of her conversation with PipeVine Press owner and founder, Mindy Kuhn. “My agent kept receiving impressive comments from the big house editors, but no one was willing to take what they saw as a risk, given the subject matter within Cooper’s Hawk. Ironically, a noteworthy, but smaller, house claimed it wasn’t large enough to provide what Cooper’s Hawk ‘deserved’ in the way of marketing attention.”
But enter PipeVine Press, which according to Tracy has “moved heaven and earth to ensure a release in just two months” since agreeing to terms in November. “Most writers wait 18 to 24 months to release a book after signing with a publisher,” she said. “PipeVine has thrown everything it has on this book and everyone on its team to ensure a record-breaking, successful release. I’m honored and grateful.”
It’s also rare, Tracy added, to be given so much access to the publishing team. “I drove to Charlotte (a few hours from her home in Liberty, North Carolina) to meet with Mindy and her senior editor, Amy Ashby. We had a lengthy discussion regarding everything from the themes within the book to what we agreed was the right size, feel, and format for the book.”
At one point during their conversation, Mindy even asked Tracy if she’d prefer a hard copy format. “I told her no, that I’d always had a sense of Cooper’s Hawk being paperback…with lots of dogeared pages from having been read over and over again for newfound nuggets or from having been lovingly loaned from one reader to another.”
Tracy also told the PipeVine team that the cover image, to her anyway, was as important as the story itself. “When Mindy’s email of the cover image landed in my inbox, I was actually afraid to open the file for a few minutes.”
When she did finally open the file, Tracy said she burst in tears and started happy dancing with her husband. Then she ran the book cover image up the road to her neighbor’s house because her neighbor and dear friend, Novella Kennedy, was the one who had inspired and encouraged Tracy to write a book about a combat veteran named Willis. “As far as Novella and I are concerned, Mindy and her team fully delivered on their promise to create a cover that most resonates with the themes and tone of Cooper’s Hawk. We couldn’t be happier.”
Book clubs are likely to find the reading guide and Q/A interview with Tracy at the end of the book especially helpful for their readers.
Here’s a brief synopsis of Cooper’s Hawk from PipeVine Press:
At the Cooper VA Hospital, tensions surface after the arrival of a rage-filled war hero and his troubled son and the mental breakdown of everyone’s favorite nurse. Drawing on his upbringing with a shaman grandfather, Willis, the new-hire janitor and Vietnam veteran with one arm, relies on lessons from the natural world—and a special hawk—to steer the boy and Phoebe, in fact everyone at the Cooper VA, toward the most benevolent outcome.
PipeVine has also agreed to publish Tracy’s next three books — the prequel and sequel to Cooper’s Hawk, and a spirituality-based memoir.
And LOOK — Cooper’s Hawk is already drawing significant praise:
“Extremely engaging…Such heart and energy and voice—all of which unfolds
with confidence and purity…It’s been a long time since a book has moved me
this much.”
— Jeffery Hess, author of Beachhead and Cold War Canoe Club
“Cooper’s Hawk introduces us to veteran-patients who rely on their VA
hospital for their health, their sanity, and their community…and reveals the
beauty in their struggles and the magic in their tragedy. Bottom line, you
cannot get through this book without feeling something deeply.”
— M.L. Doyle, co-author of the Shoshana Johnson memoir,
I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home,
and author of The Bonding Spell and The Peacekeeper’s Photograph
“‘What do you imagine happens to a man when he finally faces the truth
about the Divinity within his enemy?’ In Cooper’s Hawk, Tracy Crow explores the divinity within all of us, the places where we shirk from seeing it, or where we long to. A work of great compassion, open-hearted and unflinching, Cooper’s Hawk provides the fodder for ample discussion about what it means to survive, to heal, and to forgive.”
— Andria Williams, author of The Longest Night
“With this novella, Tracy Crow has created a world that transports readers
into VA hospital rooms and into the cemetery beyond, with all the psychological
freight that this implies. Even more, Crow’s fiction returns us to the world we
live in—and to ourselves within it….”
— Brian Turner, author of My Life As A Foreign Country: A Memoir and Here, Bullet
“If you’ve ever wondered about the invisible wounds of war, you’ll want to
read this book. With the warmth of a storyteller and clarity of perspective
only a cultural insider can offer, Tracy Crow takes us into a world few will
ever know—though the connections matter to us all.”
— Kate Hendricks Thomas, PhD,
author of Brave, Strong, True: The Modern Warrior’s Battle for Balance and Bulletproofing the Psyche
“Deeply touching…the transformative messages of hope and healing within
Cooper’s Hawk convey an unforgettable resonance.”
— CJ Scarlet, life coach and author of The Badass Girl’s Guide: Uncommon Strategies to Outwit Predators
“A deeply spiritual meditation on compassion, creativity, the natural world,
and human connection. In Cooper’s Hawk, Tracy Crow goes beyond tales
of individual suffering in the aftermath of war to consider the nature of
moral injury, the possibility of redemption, and the ways in which we make
meaning from traumatic experience.”
— Jerri Bell, managing editor of O-Dark-Thirty and co-author of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan
