Greetings. I hope that your spring is going well. Trinity Christian College’s Commencement was held in the middle of May, at a local minor-league baseball stadium. This enabled us to allow students to have as many guests attend as they would like (i. e., no tickets for students to manage, no tickets for staff to check). We also had fireworks. It was a great celebration. Included among the over two hundred graduates were five history majors. I wish Erik, Haley, Julian, Trevor, and Vern all the best.
I had meant to post this much earlier this summer (hence the first paragraph’s description of Commencement…). It’s hard to believe that it’s almost the end of June; Trinity’s summer registration event, Blueprints, was last weekend. But being delayed by Dean of Faculty work at Trinity means that I can report more developments on the book production front. There have actually been a number of developments in the production of A Prairie Faith during the last several months.
At the end of March I received the copyeditor’s report on my book. He had read the entire manuscript. He asked a lot of good questions and made a lot of proposed changes. My assignment was to read through his changes and either accept them or make a different suggestion. In almost every case, I accepted the proposed changes. Overall, his work made the work more straightforward, smooth, and understandable. Many thanks to Tom for his work with the book. It is much improved.
At the end of April, one of Eerdmans’s copywriters also shared with me the advertising copy for the book so that I could make comments and corrections. I suggested several changes, but in general, I was very pleased. In early May, the Art Department at Eerdmans shared with me a draft of their design for the front cover. I was very glad that they could incorporate a picture that I took during my research trip to South Dakota in 2018. I think that it looks really good. I can’t share it yet because of their production timeline. Many thanks to Caroline and Kristine for their work to promote the book.
Then in the middle of May, I received the entire book, laid out and typeset, for me to proofread. It was exciting to see the entire book as it will appear in print. Reading through it in a different form enabled me to catch some things that had snuck by me in earlier revisions. It also enabled me to correct some portions of the book that were wrong because of some confused communication between me and the copyeditor. I also responded to some questions from Eerdmans’ proofreader this week.
Finally, I was able to work with the production team at Eerdmans and an independent mapmaker to create two maps for the book. One is a map of Laura’s travels; the other is a map of the towns around Mansfield, Missouri. Laura did move a lot during her childhood and early adulthood, and during the sixty-plus years she lived in Mansfield, she often visited nearby towns, so there are a lot of place names in the second half of the book. Having these two maps will be helpful to the reader. I really appreciate the publisher’s willingness to include the maps. (I’m amazed that the University of Missouri Press did not include a map in John Miller’s otherwise excellent biography Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder.) The maps were finalized earlier this month. Many thanks to the mapmaker, Daniel, and to Laurel, my project editor.
I believe that the next step in production is for me to look at final page proofs for one last proofreading. At that point I’ll also be putting together the Index. I think that I have most of the index terms selected already, so I will just need to work through the proofs to get the right page numbers.
It looks like the publication date for the book will be February 6, 2024, one day before Laura’s 157th birthday.
Thanks again for all your encouragement.
Links:
Trinity Christian College – If you know someone looking for a quality, private Christian education that’s affordable, check us out.
Freeworldmaps.net – The gateway to the mapmaker I worked with.
The Faith of Laura Ingalls Wilder 