American holiday storytelling generally adheres to certain time-tested formulas.
A tightly wound, big-city career woman winds up in a small town, where a slower way of life beckons with its candy-colored lights, homespun values and a flannel-clad suitor who is as easy-going as she is driven. And don’t forget the dog in a bandanna.
Kathy Hogan Trocheck, who writes women’s fiction under the pen name Mary Kay Andrews, is establishing herself as an elfin, bell-jingling bard by crafting atmospheric novels set during the holidays. She takes these familiar roasted chestnuts and serves up her own twist in her latest novel, “Bright Lights, Big Christmas” (St. Martin’s Press, $24).
The protagonist is Kerry Tolliver, an unemployed artist adrift in her life, who camps out in the middle of Greenwich Village to sell the Christmas trees her family grows on its North Carolina farm. New York proves bustling, stressful and vaguely intimidating, and strangers are not always what they seem. Will she find purpose, community and romance? Trocheck, who is fleet with her pacing, keeps the reader guessing right up until the end, despite the relentless onslaught of warm fuzzies. (And, yes, there’s a dog — Queenie.)
This novel comes on the reindeer hoof-beats of her 2021 Christmas novella, “The Santa Suit.” Both novels warm the heart like a cashmere sweater and mark a sort of seasonal departure for Trocheck, who has been dubbed the “queen of beach reads,” prompting author Adriana Trigiani to observe, “Nobody owns Christmas like Santa’s favorite novelist, Mary Kay Andrews.”
Why this new theme from the prolific Atlanta writer who has been cranking out a book a year for three decades?
Simply put, Trocheck, who wears a lot of red, is just freaking festive by nature.
“I just love the time of year,” she says. “The sense of family, the closeness. The nostalgia, the sentimentality. It’s a season of hope and magic. Plus, I just love any excuse to decorate. My collections have collections.”
Obviously.
If the so-called “war on Christmas” has kept you up at night, visit Trocheck’s home in Avondale Estates and fret not. For decades, Trocheck, an antiques buff who combs estate sales, has collected hundreds of vintage decorations. She can’t even guesstimate the number of old-timey Santa Clauses , so some species of rosy-cheeked elf peaks eerily from every shelf.
“It’s really hoarding at this point,” she says.
She has not one but four Christmas trees. “The main tree in the living room is decorated with hundreds of vintage ‘Shiny Brite’ ornaments from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s,” she says. “A second tree in the front hall is hung with an amazing trove of vintage, hand-beaded ornaments I scored at an estate sale in Buckhead a couple years ago. The third tree is also in the front hall and is hung with 30 years’ worth of handmade copper and brass ornaments, which are the creations of dear neighbors who create a different ornament every year. And the fourth tree is in the sun room where I write, mostly just white lights because I like to look at it while I’m working.”
The decorations go up just after the Thanksgiving turkey is consumed, in time for Trocheck’s rowdy book club, which has met for 30+ years and kicks off her season. “We like to drink wine and have lively conversation,” she says. “I’m still on the tail-end of book events for “Bright Lights, Big Christmas,” and in between, awaiting copy edits for next summer’s book, “Summer at the Saint,” which will be out in May. These will have to be turned around ASAP, so I’ve mostly shopped online for Christmas gifts.”
Family holiday traditions include a tour of “Garden Lights, Holiday Nights” at the Atlanta Botanical Garden and lots of baking. She typically makes 12 lemon pound cakes to send to her New York publishing team, along with several more for neighbors. Christmas Day is marked by mass at St. Thomas More, a baked ham, hot cocoa and the occasional Tom & Jerry, which is sort of like eggnog, spiked with whisky.
Trocheck so embodies the holiday spirit that she was tapped to be grand marshal of the Christmas parade in Cashiers, North Carolina, this year. “It poured rain, so I sat in the cab of a 1947 vintage firetruck but had a great time,” she says.
Trocheck grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, the middle of three sisters, with two younger brothers. Both parents worked in sales, which helps explain her gift for gab. “My mother was a huge reader,” she says. “I was reading before first grade and can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer.” She studied journalism at the University of Georgia and then worked for the Savannah Morning News. She married her husband, Tom, in 1976, and the couple eventually turned up in Atlanta, where he earned a degree at Georgia Tech and she went to work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a feature writer.
Yearning to be home with her two children, Trocheck wrote her first book in secret, she says, even though she belonged to a writers’ group. “All we did was bitch about our editors and drink Bloody Marys. I got a bunch of good rejection letters.”
Author Sue Grafton helped Trocheck get her first book published: “Every Crooked Nanny,” which introduced sparky Callahan Garrity as a cleaning woman turned sleuth, abetted by a crew of cagey eccentrics. The dialogue was snappy. The publishing world took notice, and Trocheck quit her day job to write seven more books in that series.
With “Savannah Blues,” Trocheck began writing under her pseudonym, which is derived from her children’s names. “I just wanted to write bigger books for a broader market,” she says, of the series of four mysteries starring an “antiques picker” named Weezie. “My editor said I could throw a body in there if I wanted, so I threw in a body.” Despite that touch of grit and craftsmanship, her work was pigeonholed initially as “chick lit,” she says. “That’s just another way to demean women’s work.”
Trocheck categorizes her writing as “women’s fiction” — relationship-oriented, marked by self-discovery, mystery and erotic frisson. “I want to be relatable,” she says. “I’m nothing if not relatable.” And there is a drawl on the page.
Trocheck’s holiday fare may be sweet as a sugarplum, but it is never saccharine — she’s too much of an acerbic, old-school newspaperwoman for that. “In Hallmark movies, the characters might kiss under the mistletoe at most, but they don’t have sex,” she says, “Well, I’m writing about adults who do adult things.”
Among her fans is Atlanta author Karin Slaughter, who says, “The thing that makes Kathy’s writing stand out is simple: She’s a very good writer. She gives a tremendous amount of attention to the language she uses, but she also works incredibly hard to make sure the plots make sense. Very few writers give the same weight to both, which makes for a much more satisfying read.”
Slaughter credits Trocheck’s success in part to the evolution of her subject matter.
“A lot of writers will screen themselves off as they get further into their careers, and they get stuck in a kind of rut, but Kathy is still interested in the world,” says Slaughter. “She wants to know more about everything. Her natural curiosity is what keeps her writing fresh.” And upbeat. “Why is happiness cheesy?” Trocheck asks. “I know violence, hatred and vengeance can make great literature, but why isn’t happiness an option? Cheesy is in the eye of the beholder,” she says, from the midst of her sea of reds and greens.
This year’s holiday celebration has taken on new meaning in the Trocheck family because of an empty seat at the table. Trocheck’s daughter, Katie, died in 2020 of complications from COVID-19, leaving behind her two children, Molly, 14, and Griffin, 12. “It’s important to me now more than ever to give my grandchildren happy memories,” Trocheck says. “The highlight of any day is the one where my grandkids show up to help bake cookies or just hang out and watch Christmas movies. They like to torture me by watching ‘Die Hard,’ and I try to get them to join me in my annual viewing of ‘White Christmas.’”
Ultimately, Christmas should be a time of good will, Trocheck says. “There’s a critical shortage of that in the world, so we do what we can.” With “Bright Lights, Big Christmas,” she says, “I wanted to send my readers a Christmas card and wish them the best.”
