When I Came West (Part Eight)
By the end of May we still had not heard anything back from the second reader. Matt wrote to me and said that he would brief Chuck Rankin about the status of the project and that Chuck and I could discuss things when we saw each other at the upcoming Western Writers of America conference in Cody, Wyoming.
Almost a year had passed since I had first pitched my memoir idea to Chuck. Finally, on June 8th when I walked up the hill to get my mail I found a letter from Matt Bokovoy's assistant stating, "Please glean what you can from the [second]reader's recommendations, but since Matt found the review unduly negative and unhelpful, we are in the process of searching for a third reader."
Of course I called Matt immediately to discuss this surprising turn of events. I was determined not to be upset and tried not to be frustrated. What I felt, truly, was a great sense of weariness about the whole process. Matt emailed me after our lengthy phone conversation and said, "…the negativity of the second reader was concerned with extra-textual considerations, and [he/she] could not get their mind around the narration of your extraordinary life. It expressed a tone of 'blame the victim,' even though the genre is memoir, so what is written is presented as forthright and true.
I will seek a third reader who can evaluate the merits of the manuscript based on what it purports to lay out or reveal." He apologized for the delay and said he appreciated my patience. Though I worked very hard not to let the second reader's report affect me, it did. I worried and I did not sleep. If someone had this strong of an adverse opinion about the book (I will not quote those remarks but suffice to say they did not recommend publication) then I had somehow failed.
