Wilmington authors' book spotlights dads

By the end of chapter two in "Saving Lucas Biggs," the fathers of the two main characters are facing death, really unpleasant deaths – and we don't even know that a third father is in worse danger.

That will-they-won't-they? tension helps fuel the suspense in the new young adult novel by Wilmington husband-wife team David Teague and Marisa de los Santos. It celebrates the importance of facing and solving your own problems in the here and now, partly through caring and concern.

While the story focuses on Margaret, whose family has the ability to travel back in time, and Josh, the boy she meets there, another theme running through the book is how hard it is for men to be great in the eyes of the world at large, and remain great in the eyes of their family, says Teague, an author and University of Delaware associate professor who teaches literature.

"I think it's hard to be a hero to the world and to your own son," Teague says.

The couple, who are parents to Charles, 15, and Annabelle, 12, decided to write the book partly because the entire family has read so many young adult books as Charles and Annabelle grew up. They chose early in the planning process to have two narrators in the story, with de los Santos writing the chapters about Margaret and Teague writing the chapters about Josh.

"We came up with the plot and then we put together a pretty detailed outline that went chapter by chapter," de los Santos says. Even so, Teague says, during writing, one or the other would change something that the other then had to accommodate down the line.

The book is sprinkled with Delaware references that would make any First Stater smile. In one hilarious bit, Margaret and her current-time pal Charlie are playing a game they started in grammar school of making up a country, complete with flag, cuisine, national colors, geography and natural resources. The country they make up is AstraZeneca.

It turns out that is a Teague family joke. Once when Annabelle was much younger, she was naming the continents of the world: Europe, North America, South America, Africa and then – AstraZeneca instead of Australia.

The town of Arden also makes an appearance, as does the name Mendenhall, among other things, both in kindly ways that extol the virtues of the utopian society Arden was meant to be, and the values of the Quakers.

The plot of "Saving Lucas Biggs" begins with Margaret's father being unjustifiably sentenced to death by a mean-spirited judge, Lucas Biggs, who controls the mill town in which they live.

Margaret knows about her family's time travel ability, but has been repeatedly warned by her father not to do it because it carries grave consequences. Despite that warning, she is convinced by her best friend Charlie's grandfather, Joshua, that the only way to save her dad might be to risk time travel.

Loaded with memorable characters, the action in the books ends up spinning out of paternal relationships – Margaret with her father, Josh with his father, and Lucas Biggs with his father.

Margaret is inspired first to help her father by going back in time, and then by his philosophy about life. He tells her, at one point, he's been able to appreciate and connect with other people, even difficult people, because he decided "everyone is a person exactly as much as he's a person" and they all deserve to be treated well, Teague points out.

She begins to realize the value of community and how many little acts of kindness – like people bringing food to the house after her father is condemned – add up to more goodness than the bad things that happen.

One of the pivotal points in the book – and any parent or child will recognize it – comes when Margaret says to her father, "I'm going to save you." And he essentially says, "OK. I think you can." It stops Margaret in her tracks, and she has to check with him: "You think I can?" And when he says again that he thinks she can, she is not only empowered, but determined.

That final benediction of "I know you can" is a natural progression of what parents do for children, Teague and de los Santos point out. From protecting them as children, to helping them negotiate school to finally sending them out to take their place in the world, parents telling their children, "I feel confident in you," is such an important part of the children's ability to face the world and succeed, Teague says.

They think of it as helping a child fill his or her toolbox to deal with the world.

Teague says that in the book, one of the fathers lives to see how his child turns out, and another dies before he can find out. He says history shows that the families of great men often struggle to find their places because those great men gave so much to society, but not necessarily to their families and children.

Even with the deaths of the fathers, he says, "You want that father-child relationship to come full circle and work out and bear fruit. In our story, we got to make it work out."

The authors have a sequel in mind, although de los Santos, who is a New York Times best-selling writer of "Love Walked In," "Belong to Me" and "Falling Together," says writing a sequel is tricky until you know how well the book will do.

With adult books, publishing houses can usually tell if a book will sell well. Not so with children's and young adult books, she says. They have longer shelf lives and selling periods..

The sequel got sidelined, though, during a bike ride de los Santos took one spring morning while Teague was teaching at University of Delaware. All of a sudden, she got an idea for a new book, and pulled over to the side of the road to send Teague a text. By the end of her ride, she had largely fleshed out the plot and the characters, and Teague opened his phone to find a barrage of messages from her.

That afternoon, instead of a phone conference with their editor to talk about a sequel, they surprised her by pitching a new story.

The new book, tentatively titled "Polly Graff and Memory Boy," also will be told in alternating chapters, with de los Santos writing the young woman's part, and Teague writing the young man's. The story will focus on the two kids who have extraordinary talents. The girl always knows when people are lying, and the boy has a perfect memory. Those skills get them into trouble, and the book details what happens and why, exploring the idea of how we use our talents.

De los Santos says she got the idea after they pitched the sequel to the editor and made the appointment for the phone conference. During that first conversation, the editor made it a point to tell them that she liked the idea, but she would also welcome other ideas in addition to a sequel.

That got de los Santos thinking. While she loves the Lucas Biggs characters, she also wanted to write a young adult book in which characters have supernatural skills like magic or some kind of fantasy set up. In this book, the kids will end up in a wilderness camp for troubled youth. Someone disappears, and the kids have to solve the mystery.

When Teague and de los Santos write, she tends to work in their office. He works all over the house, often in the dining room, with things spread out all over the table.

They just finished the new book last week, polishing the manuscript enough to push the button that sent it to their editor.

Already, they say, they miss the new characters.

Contact Betsy Price at (302) 324-2884 or beprice@delawareonline.com.

MEET THE AUTHORS

• If you would like David Teague to visit your school to do a reading for your class, contact him at david@davidteague.net. A warning: "Saving Lucas Biggs" is not suitable for younger grades. Teague visited about 80 Delaware schools to read from his children's book, "Franklin's Big Dreams," and is happy to read from that for younger children.

• Marisa de los Santos and David Teague will do readings and sign copies of "Saving Lucas Biggs" at these locations: July 12 at 9 a.m. at Hockessin Bookshelf Breakfast with the Authors; Aug. 9 at 2 p.m. at Woodlawn Library at Wilmington; Aug. 17 at 3 p.m. at Browseabout Books in Rehoboth.