Chicopee author releases ‘The Current Rate of Exchange’

Date: 10/31/2014

CHICOPEE – Jacqueline Lynch has written several novels based in history, but the story of her new book, “The Current Rate of Exchange” is of far more recent vintage.

The Chicopee writer has set her new book in the months following the attacks on 9/11.

She told Reminder Publications originally the book had been a much more whimsical pieces about a woman traveling to New Zealand. “I had to re-think what it means to be am American on the word stage,” she said.

Lynch had traveled to New Zealand herself and thought the trip would be the inspiration for a book one day. At first she envisioned it as a light-hearted book not unlike Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad,” but what she saw on message boards about the United States following the attacks changed her mind.

The anti-American sentiment made her angry and she explained, “We are all stuck on this planet together and have to figure out a way to get along.”

The official synopsis of the novel reads: “Rose, a tall, bumbling woman from Chicopee, Mass., travels to New Zealand to re-establish ties with her late mother’s family, navigating the otherworldly tension of traveling in the months after 9/11. Her ill-planned adventure turns her life around, and that of Nora, her New Zealand cousin, whose family problems immediately begin to involve Rose. 

Nora’s elderly mother, who broke off ties with Rose’s family; Nora’s unemployed husband who confides his dreams to Rose instead of to his wife; and Nora’s brother whose emotional meltdown from losing the family farm all challenge Rose to bring her family’s past full circle. A sudden romance with the farm manager with the mysterious past of his own was not, however, on her original agenda. She is anxious about continuing it lest she repeat mistakes made by her American father and New Zealand mother. Armed with old family letters, Rose retraces her mother’s footsteps as a World War II government agricultural worker, or ‘Land Girl.’ The information Rose learns from the letters is key to preventing a tragedy in Nora’s family.”

The novel is available as an eBook and in paperback from Amazon, CreateSpace, Barnes & Noble, and many online shops.

Lynch has written two other novels, “Besides the Still Waters” set in the area now known as the Quabbin Reservoir, and “Meet Me in Nuthatch,” set in a small town in 1904. Her non-fiction books includes on the history of Ames Manufacturing, while the other is a collection of essays about new England, “States of Mind: New England.”

She has also written plays and for various publications. Lynch also has written several mysteries.

Lynch works as a transcriptionist for an insurance company. “I would just like to write a little more, but I’m leery making the jump,” she said.

She has self-published her books, which means “you do everything yourself,” she explained.

“You just don’t have the imprimatur of being selected by a publisher,” she explained. “I don’t think that most readers really care.”

She added some well-known authors have gone the self-published route to earn a greater percent of the sales.

Lynch said that she “works on many project sat once. Some rise to the top, while others sink to the bottom.”

A movie lover – “I’ve been watching old movies since I could toddle over to the TV and adjust the rabbit ear.” – Lynch compiled one book “Movies in Our Time: Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century” based on her blog postings at her Another Old Movie Blog (http://anotheroldmovieblog.blogspot.com) and is working on another book, this one about actress Ann Blyth.

She had seen Blyth on several films and discovered she was “really good.” Relatively little has been written about her and Lynch dedicated her blog postings to covering her film and television appearances. Lynch is particularly interested in seeing what she described as a “lost” movie, a 1951 comedy “Katie Did It.”

For more about Lynch and her work, go to www.jacquelinetlynch.com.