Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

Erica’s breakthrough

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Staff

Photo by Ava Barlow. Carrboro resident Erica Eisdorfer is the author of <em>The Wet Nurse’s Tale</em>, due to be published in August 2009.” title=”authora110608″ width=”180″ height=”120″ align=”left” size-medium wp-image-4082″ /></a><strong>Vicky Dickson</strong></p>
<p>It must be the rare bookseller indeed who sees her own novel favorably reviewed by her store’s top-selling author. But that’s what happened to Bull’s Head Bookshop manager and <em>Carrboro Citizen</em> book reviewer Erica Eisdorfer after she entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest last November. From a gradually winnowed field of more than 5,000 submissions, Erica’s book, <em>The Wet Nurse’s Tale</em>, was selected as one of the top 10 entries. And if you log onto Amazon.com today and search for <em>The Wet Nurse’s Tale</em>, you can read a glowing review by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of <em>Eat, Pray, Love</em>.<br />
<span id=
Erica and I belong to the same writing group, so I had the distinct pleasure of watching the evolution of the story of wet nurse Susan Rose, a tale set in Britain in 1847. Our group shared Erica’s frustration as she searched for an agent for her novel, and heard her describe the online contest she’d discovered, and might have entered. (“Though I probably actually didn’t,” she says. “I think I misread the instructions about submitting.”) We heard about the letters and emails that agents began to send her after she made the contest’s top 100. And saw the rash (“But it’s a good rash!”) that developed on Erica’s arms as she waited for that 100 to be cut to 10.

After Erica hired one of the emailing agents to represent her, she began to suspect the agent of not rooting for The Wet Nurse’s Tale to actually win the contest. This was puzzling, until we realized that the winner would receive a non-negotiable book contract with Penguin. Erica’s agent apparently thought she could negotiate a far more favorable contract; and though we were disappointed to learn that Erica wouldn’t be going to New York City as one of the three winners, we were elated when the agent turned out to be right. Thanks to Erica’s agent’s negotiating skills, The Wet Nurse’s Tale will be published by Putnam and will arrive in stores next August.

You can preorder the book on Amazon’s website while also discovering tidbits about Erica herself. Her graduation from a certain university in Durham notwithstanding, Erica’s one of us. She has a long history in our community, including eight years spent reviewing books on WUNC, 20 years managing the Bull’s Head Bookshop at UNC and many, many years of residence in Carrboro.

Fellow writing group members Edith, Rebecca, Gina, Betsy and I are eagerly anticipating the debut of Erica’s novel. So should you, if you’re a fan of well-researched, tightly written historical novels and quirky heroines with ironic senses of humor. I can’t wait.

Web Archive

© 2026 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme