Local author takes readers on a journey through The Forest of a Thousand Books
The heroine in “The Sapphire Key” is named after author Tara Rack-Amber’s daughter Lily, pictured here apple picking at Simmons Farm with her father, Kevin Amber. Courtesy of Tara Rack-Amber.
Novelist Tara Rack-Amber said her husband Kevin and their daughter, Lily, are both supportive of her writing career. Courtesy of Tara Rack-Amber.
Rack-Amber said she and her family explored the local area during lockdown, an experience that helped her better appreciate the beauty of Fayette County. “The Sapphire Key” takes place in forest settings loosely inspired by the ones surrounding her hometown.
“The Sapphire Key”
By Katherine Mansfield
Staff writer
mansfield@observer-reporter.com
Tara Rack-Amber dreamed of being an author.
“When I was younger, probably about my daughter’s age, I would write stories. I had this hardbacked journal that had flower fabric on it,” said Rack-Amber, a Uniontown native and Waynesburg University graduate. “I would write stories I made up. Being able to create a story and have someone read it was always a dream of mine.”
That dream has come true – again.
Rack-Amber’s nonfiction book “Mousekatots” was published in 2015 by Theme Park Press. In May 2021, she released “Seraphim Falls,” a Lynchian collection of short stories that soared into Amazon’s Top 200 Small Town Novels, under the penname T.R. Toth.
And now, the one-time radio personality, public relations coordinator and Golden Quill-nominated journalist is adding young adult novelist to her list of accomplishments.
Rack-Amber’s debut YA novel “The Sapphire Key” hit bookshelves in November 2021 and is available to purchase through the author’s site, https://www.tararackamber.com/.
“Out of all three of the books, this is probably my most important book to me, personally,” said Rack-Amber. “It was a gift to my daughter. It came from a little nugget of an idea that she had when she was so little.”
While waiting to head into the public library, a then-3-year-old Lily Amber (Rack-Amber’s daughter, after whom the novel’s main character is named) commented to her father that a nearby grove of trees looked like “The Forest of a Thousand Libraries.”
Rack-Amber’s husband, Kevin Amber, mentioned Lily’s comment in passing.
“I didn’t think too much about it at first. I just thought, that’s so creative,” said Rack-Amber. Months passed, but Rack-Amber couldn’t shake The Forest of a Thousand Libraries.
She thought, “You know, this might make a really great story.”
Thus, “The Sapphire Key” was born.
The novel follows Lily Buchjager, an eighth-grader struggling to fit in with the popular girls when she’s tasked with saving all the stories humanity has ever loved from an evil sorceress. With the help of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and the Cowardly Lion – and, of course, a locket and a bit of magic – Lily travels from The Forest of a Thousand Libraries through fairy realms to save the Story Weavers and beloved books.
The tale, Rack-Amber said, spilled onto the page.
“It’s funny because I like to plan everything out. For ‘Seraphim Falls,’ I completely plotted everything out,” she said. “When I wrote ‘The Sapphire Key’ the very first time, I just sat down and just wrote it.”
Within a few months, Rack-Amber was handing over a first draft to her husband who, she said, reads all her work. Though the words flowed, crafting a novel is no easy task – a rollercoaster, as Rack-Amber puts it – and there was a moment when she questioned a plot thread.
“There was a moment – I don’t want to say exactly what it was, because it’s a spoiler – where a character ends up dying. I really struggled with that, given the ages that the book is targeted for,” said Rack-Amber. “To make it more impactful, that had to happen. As I was writing, I was like, this is going to have to happen in order for Lily to go on and turn into the young lady I wanted her to be at the end.”
That young lady is a strong, determined and confident girl, someone Rack-Amber hopes her now-8-year-old daughter will grow into.
“I developed the character to be sort of like what I thought (my daughter) might be like when she got a little bit older.”
Lily Amber thinks her mother’s profession – Rack-Amber is now a full-time authorpreneur who hosts a ‘Seraphim Falls’ podcast and sells novel merch through her site – is cool, and it’s the support of her family that pushes the novelist to put pen to paper, figuratively speaking.
“It is a lot sometimes. I have a really amazing, supportive family,” Rack-Amber said. “Sometimes you wonder, is that what I’m supposed to be doing?”
Judging by the warm reception of ‘The Sapphire Key,’ Rack-Amber is, indeed, meant to craft imaginative worlds that take readers on a journey much like the ones she enjoyed flipping through in her youth.
“Childhood literature is so important. We need to get books in their hands. Those kinds of stories, whenever I was growing up, they were always so important to me. The classic stories seem to be getting lost a little bit. I wanted to introduce the younger generation (to them),” Rack-Amber said. “This is what I do: I write books and I try just to develop that love of reading for younger people, too.”