Blue Shoe: Local author’s new book inspired by his wife

It took some convincing to get Leawood author Roderick Townley to write his latest book, “The Blue Shoe.”

The process started with a request from his wife, Wyatt, to hear a bedtime story.

What came to mind was an idea including a blue shoe in the window of a cobbler shop that did not fit anybody, but everyone wanted to own it.

Wyatt told her husband he had to write the story down.

“I protested as always,” Townley said.

After all, it wasn’t a story, it was just the beginning of a story, he told her.

“But she made me write down the beginning of the story and I kind of got hooked on it,” he said. “It had a very sweet quality to it.”

Townley spent the next several years writing and re-writing the story. His final product tells “an off-centered fairy tale” set in a mythical mountain town, he said.

“The Blue Shoe” was released in October, and in keeping with the title and subject, is printed in blue ink. The illustrations are by Mary Grand Pre, who also illustrated the Harry Potter book series.

The story follows an apprentice, Hap Barlo, who is accused of stealing the coveted, jewel-covered shoe. As punishment he is banished, like all prisoners, to a remote location on the far side of a mountain. It is the same place his father had been banished a year before. As the subtitle explains, the book is about thievery, villainy and sorcery, and the blue shoe.

“Red is sort of an angry and active color,” Townley said. “I wanted something kind of mysterious and calm. Although the story is not at all calm.”

As the story progresses, Hap must face greater responsibilities than just his own survival. While banished, he not only meets his father, but others forced to mine the mountain for jewels.

“When Hap gets deep into the mountain, he starts to feel for the mountain like it is really alive,” Townley said. “It starts to hurt him when the dynamite goes off to blow out another bunch of jewels from the face of the mineshaft.”

Though the book might be considered one for youth, Townley said adults will also enjoy it.

“It deals with serious issues like greed, prejudice and environmentalism, loyalty, while at the same time being fun and funny,” he said. “…It has actually real issues and central to it is the sacredness of the earth.”

Townley has written books of poetry, literary criticism, adult novels and non-fiction. “The Blue Shoe” is his sixth children’s book.

Even fantasy books require research, he said. For this book, Townley drew on his years of studying Anglo-Saxon English and Middle English in graduate school to create a language for a race of trolls, called the Auki.

“I had to cobble together a language and yet make it close enough to English that a kid reading the book could figure it out,” he said.

He also researched mining, searching for blue gems so he could describe what would adorn the jewel encrusted shoe.

Townley and his wife moved to Kansas in 1990 from New York, where he was a journalist.

Both he and Wyatt are writers and share an office in their home, often helping each other as they work, he said.

“It may be unusual; we actually get along and we’re not in competition at all,” he said. “We try and push each other forward and challenge each other. We are each other’s police persons. Of course, every once in awhile I have to come up with a bedtime story.”

Townley will discuss “The Blue Shoe” at 2 p.m. April 3 at Leawood Pioneer Library, 4700 Town Center Drive. Books will be available for purchase and signing.

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