Suzanne Stewart
Staff Writer
It’s always interesting to hear from visitors as to how they learned about the area. Whether it’s a post on social media, word of mouth or news article, there’s never a shortage of sharing about how Pocahontas County is such a special place.
Brooklyn resident and south-western Virginia native Jessica Walker first learned about Green Bank in college, in a class called “Life Beyond Earth.” The lessons she learned in that class stuck with her.
“We learned all about Green Bank and the Green Bank Observatory because it’s the center for extraterrestrial intelligence searching. Ever since that class, I’ve been really fascinated by it,” she said. “It’s been in the back of my mind as an interesting place.”
Walker earned her degree in fine arts and entered the workforce, about 10 years ago, as a book illustrator. She published her first book in 2017, a board book called “Baby Feminists” which is about famous feminists as babies.
At one point, Walker imagined a story she thought would make a good book and when she pitched it to her agent, they encouraged her to write it herself.
“I was always kind of terrified of writing,” she said.
“I had an idea for a book and I sent it to my agent, and she said, ‘I think you could write this.’
“It was really an act of trying something new.”
The book, “The Secret Astronomers,” is based in Green Bank, in the fictional Green Bank High School, where two teen girls meet through notes they leave for each other in an old astronomy textbook in the school library.
As a visual artist, it was obvious illustrations would be a big part of Walker’s debut novel. The book is much more than just a story. It’s an epistolary novel, which means the story is told through those notes instead of through a narrative.
Every page of the book has illustrations. The background of each page is text from an actual astronomy textbook, which is covered with post-notes, drawings and handwritten text.
“It’s really meant to feel like you picked up a book at the library and found a secret world inside where these two people were writing to each other,” Walker said. “It is a coming-of-age story. One of the characters is from Green Bank. She’s spent her whole life there. She’s generations deep into Green Bank.
“The other character comes in and she’s kind of been dropped into Green Bank due to a circumstance in her family, so she’s very unfamiliar with Appalachian culture,” she continued. “They come from very opposite ends of our country’s political spectrum, I guess I would say, but they find a unique way to get to know each other, while remaining anonymous throughout the entire book.”
While the characters in the book are fictional, the town is very real and Walker said she wanted to come to Green Bank to learn more about it and, in a way, ask permission to set the book there.
“I can’t imagine writing a book about a place and not going there,” she said. “If it’s a real place in the real world. I also really felt like I needed to ask permission. A lot of the story is about assumptions about rural culture or questioning the stereotypes about Appalachian culture and people, and I kind of wanted to talk to people about that and get a sense of how they thought that could be told in a really respectful, yet authentic way.”
Walker spent several days in Pocahontas County, meeting with locals and learning about the culture of the area. She admits it wasn’t quite long enough, and she looks forward to returning to Green Bank.
As luck would have it, she will be returning for an author’s visit at Green Bank Public Library. The event is scheduled for Monday, April 6, at 6 p.m. and Walker said she is looking forward to sharing the book with the community.
Now that she has successfully written her first novel, Walker said she is hooked. She already has ideas brewing for a follow-up and can’t wait to get it on paper.
“I can’t think of anything else creatively that I want to be doing other than writing books,” she said. “I really like the young adult audience. I find that I never quite left my young adulthood through a writing perspective, so there’s a lot to explore there for me.”
“The Secret Astronomers” is available where books are sold, including at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. To learn more about Walker and her work, visit hellojessicawalker.com
