Salem's new lot

A marketing campaign links a new book, its publisher, and the historic seaport town

Salem native Sandy Barry (her pen name is Brunonia Barry) made the city a vivid character in her novel, "The Lace Reader." (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

SALEM - Every first novel needs a plan for introducing the new writer to a national audience, and the plan for Brunonia Barry, author of "The Lace Reader," has a rare and clever twist. Along with the standard ad campaign and author tour, publisher William Morrow is working with Salem's tourism agency, local merchants, and historic sites to promote the book, which is set here, and the city at the same time. While Salem hopes "The Lace Reader" will draw tourists to town, author and publisher hope the city's attractions will bolster the book.

"It has been the greatest thing to fall into Salem's lap, for promotion and marketing," said Kate Fox, director of Destination Salem, the tourism bureau. "It already has this great literary past, with Hawthorne and playwright Arthur Miller [author of 'The Crucible,' about the Salem witchcraft trials], and now having a contemporary novel is a treat."

"The Lace Reader" is a psychic mystery set in this old seaport town, notorious for the 17th-century witchcraft hysteria and later known for the fiction of novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and the 19th-century China trade. As reported in the Globe, Barry and her husband, Gary Ward, self-published the book last fall, and it stirred such interest that they landed a $2 million contract to republish it with Morrow. The new edition hits bookstore shelves today with a massive first printing of 150,000.

Sandy Barry (Brunonia is a pen name), 47, was born in Salem and raised in neighboring Marblehead. In 1995 she returned from Los Angeles, where she had worked as a screenwriter, and began to write a novel. "The Lace Reader" concerns Towner Whitney, one of a family of women with the power to see the future in the patterns of Ipswich lace. Towner has a troubled and confused past, and when her beloved Aunt Eva drowns under mysterious circumstance, she returns to Salem from Los Angeles to settle her aunt's affairs. Soon she is drawn into a maelstrom involving putative local witches, a loony evangelical cult, and a love affair with a city detective.

The city of Salem is a vivid central character in "The Lace Reader." While the human characters are imaginary, the book is full of real streets and places: the Custom House, Salem Common, founder Roger Conant's statue, old Derby Wharf, offshore islands, and witch-related landmarks. During a drive along Chestnut Street to her home for an interview, Barry remarked, "Eva's funeral passes along here from the First Church to the cemetery."

When Morrow bought her book, Barry saw appealing synergies to be had. She mentioned the idea to Fox and to Morrow, and a burst of collaboration followed. "A sense of place is such a strong part of the novel," said Tavia Kowalchuk, Morrow's marketing director, "and the history of the city makes it a natural attraction."

Morrow sent a film crew to Salem to make a video of scenes mentioned in the book, as well as a lacemaker at work. The video appears on the websites of the book (Lacereader.com) and Destination Salem (Salem.org), and on YouTube.com. Morrow also printed up a Salem walking-tour map, showing scenes in the book.

Historical and cultural organizations were eager to participate. The First Church of Salem allowed filming of Barry in the sanctuary. The House of the Seven Gables, made famous by Hawthorne's novel of that name, is planning a walking "literatour" of locations that appear in "The Lace Reader." "I loved [the novel]," said executive director Anita Blackaby, who read an advance copy, "because it makes Salem come to life in a different way - it has threads that reach back into the past, but has a modern perspective."

Business, too, has joined in. The Salem Trolley will offer "Lace Reader" tours. Artemesia Botanicals on Pickering Wharf, which gives tarot card readings, will do lace readings (though the art is entirely Barry's invention) at the book's release party and may offer them later at the shop. William Morrow is hosting a "Lace Reader" sweepstakes (linked from both Lacereader.com and Salem.org), offering two weekend trips for two to Salem, with accommodations at the Hawthorne Hotel and the Salem Inn, plus dining and a stack of gift certificates for tours and shops. Morrow will run the contest and pay the winners' airfare, but everything else is contributed by the locals.

Countless novels have been set in big cities such as New York or Los Angeles, but locating a novel in a relatively more intimate, colorful, and historic community like Salem, which everyone has heard of but relatively few have visited, can draw people who want to see the real places they read about. While that's good short-term publicity for a new book, it can benefit a city for years.

Charles McCarthy, a staffer at the Gloucester Tourist Information Centre, says visitors to the Cape Ann port still ask for directions to the Crow's Nest, a real bar featured in the 2000 movie version of Sebastian Junger's 1997 book, "The Perfect Storm." "They ask, 'Where is the wall with the fishermen's names that I saw in the movie?' " McCarthy said. In fiction, the closest precedent is John Berendt's 1994 megaseller, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," set in Savannah, Ga. So many tourists flocked to Savannah that the famous statue of the little girl with arms outstretched, used on the book jacket, was removed from the Bonaventure Cemetery and placed in the local art museum for safekeeping.

"It's still going on," said Lindsay Whitaker of the Savannah Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. "The locals refer to [Berendt's novel] as 'the book.' It really put Savannah on the map." "The Book" Gift Shop and Midnight Museum specializes in "Midnight" collectibles and offers bus and walking tours of sites in the novel.

Such possible benefits have not been lost on Salem officials. "It's a way to cast a spotlight on Salem," Mayor Kim Driscoll said. "We're a small city with no major highways or manufacturing. The hospitality industry is our job base. Most people know Salem from the witch hysteria, but that was only six weeks. 'The Lace Reader' keeps that part in but touches on so much more that is worthwhile."

Barry said she is pleased that her hometown has a virtual life, in her own book, and that the real Salem may reap the benefits.

"I hoped this would happen for Salem," she said, "because I love it so much here. It's one of the friendliest places I've ever been, with a lot of history and wonderful architecture." She's already 200 pages into her next novel. Of course, it's set in Salem.

David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.