Please find below an excerpt from Redwood Curtain Rising, a soon-to-be-published novel by local resident Nancy Resnick about “chosen family, healing and the courage it takes to write a new life chapter at any age.”

Redwood Curtain Rising will be available at local bookstores next month. You can preorder a copy at Resnick’s website. Also, there’ll be a reading and meet-and-greet with the author at the Morris Graves Museum on Sunday, May 24, at 1 p.m. See here for details.

Are you a Humboldt County writer who has written a book? Or a writer who has written a book about Humboldt County? You should share an excerpt with LoCO Lit Bit! Hit us up at news@lostcoastoutpost.com, and put “Lit Bit” in the subject line. 

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The cute 1920s Craftsman house was on I Street in Eureka, shielded from the busy through street by a high redwood fence and dense foliage.

“Ready to do this?” Keisha shifted the wine bottle and tray of brownies to one hand and knocked on the door with the other. Anna held a bright bouquet of flowers. Through the glass they could see people inside the house, but no one seemed to have noticed their knock.

“Should we just go in?” Anna asked. Keisha nodded her assent and they made their way past a group of relaxed, mostly gray-haired people, looking for Keisha’s colleague Romi, who had invited them to the birthday gathering.

“There you are, welcome!” Romi enfolded Keisha in a warm full-body hug that seemed characteristic of Humboldt. “And you must be Anna.” She extended her embrace to Anna, then whisked the flowers into a vase, positioned the brownies on a table already loaded with desserts, and deftly slotted the wine into place with a number of other bottles on a side table.

Everyone was talking about the earthquake. Where they were when it happened, what they’d lost to breakage. Some were making plans to help with food distribution and other relief work. Anna and Keisha found themselves welcomed, mingling and joining surprisingly wide-ranging conversations, talking with one woman about her travels with her son in Peru, and with another woman who was flying to Mexico the next morning.

Keisha stood next to a younger, dark-haired woman who was adding more unmatched plates and cutlery to the table. “Hi, I’m Rebecca. It’s my mom’s birthday party, and this is my house.”

“Your house is lovely,” said Keisha. The Craftsman-style house was small but full of charm, with high ceilings and well-proportioned rooms.

“Yeah, I was super lucky to buy this a couple of years ago before the prices started going up.” Rebecca adjusted their offerings on the table already filled with bowls and platters of food.

“No kidding,” said Keisha. “I live in Portland and prices have been sky-high there for a long time.”

“For sure. Portland’s a good city. I grew up in Humboldt and wouldn’t have predicted I’d want to come back. I left after high school and lived in some different cities in the Midwest and on the East Coast. But here I am, with my parents and my sister nearby.”

Romi joined their conversation. “My kids are adults and live here now too. I’m glad they came back; we see each other all the time.”

“You’re both lucky to have family close like that,” said Keisha. “I don’t have any siblings. I was adopted as an eight-year-old, but in foster placements before that. My adoptive parents died when I was starting college. My only close relative wasn’t really a blood relative, but I called her my Nanna. She passed less than a year ago.”

She found herself unexpectedly near tears. She didn’t know why she was confiding in these women. Probably all this emotional openness was contagious. Romi put an arm around Keisha’s shoulders. “That just happened, then. I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, and rather than being a rote phrase, her words reflected genuine kindness.

What was it with all of this touching and hugging, Keisha wondered. It was kind of nice in a way, even though the hug was a form of physical intimacy she hadn’t been expecting; but still, the air inside the cottage started to feel too warm, excessively cozy and intimate. She needed to get out of there. She glanced around the party and, seeing that Anna was engaged in conversation, decided to go walk around a couple of blocks.

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Once outside in the crisp evening air, Keisha wondered what the hell had just happened. It wasn’t like her to start revealing deeply personal things to people she didn’t know. She was practiced at keeping her own counsel. She felt agitated and started taking long brisk strides along the residential street, barely noticing the well-maintained Craftsman bungalows and tidy yards.

Don’t let them get to you, never show weakness, always demonstrate competency. Show that you have earned your place. Take nothing for granted. These principles had served Keisha well as a child, keeping her out of trouble, her grades always high despite disruptions in her living situation — even those times she would wake up in the morning and have to recall which placement she was in, which family was pretending she was part of them. The approach was pretty ingrained by the time she became an adult. She knew it was atypical for a kid in foster care; it was more common to preemptively strike out, to misbehave, not wait to be rejected. But Keisha had her Teflon to keep her strong and contained.

She’d been starting third grade when she was adopted by Carl and Pamela. They were solid people: sincere, matter-of-fact, kind. They belonged to the Unitarian Church, helped their community, and respected different beliefs and creeds. She sometimes felt as though her adoption allowed them to check off a box labeled ‘good deeds.’ But even if there was a tiny bit of self-satisfaction involved in their adoption of a mixed-race child, it didn’t diminish the goodness of their actions.

Keisha’s life improved. It was much better to have stability, continuity, to live in a pleasant, clean, modest single-story tract home in a neighborhood of small lots and well-tended gardens. Over the next years she proved to them that they hadn’t made a mistake in taking her in. She wanted to convince them, but at the same time she held a part of herself back, just to be safe. She was waiting for proof, too-that they were legitimately her parents and the whole thing wasn’t just temporary.

And then meeting Nanna gave Keisha’s life another turn for the better. Their relationship started with a chance encounter on the street. Keisha had been walking by when the little old lady called out to her, something about what a nice day it was. An old lady in a battered straw hat, brown and skinny as the rake she was using to weed her vegetable patch.

Greetings grew into conversations over homemade cookies and lemonade on the big front porch. It was like discovering a grandmother who lived right around the corner. Keisha started helping Nanna with her big vegetable garden and learning about cooking from her. She’d worried at first about how Carl and Pamela would react. To their credit, they took the relationship in stride. They called her Nanna too, and treated her as Keisha’s honorary grandmother. Something about the connection to an older generation seemed to anchor the family. Keisha would always be grateful for how Nanna helped her appreciate her good fortune in her adoptive parents.

Soon after she started college, her life crumbled. Carl and Pamela were one freeway exit from their home, returning from dinner at one of their favorite restaurants. They were hit by a truck that had crossed the center divider, the driver trying frantically to brake. The mechanical malfunction was fatal for both Keisha’s parents and the truck driver, a young man with a pregnant fiancée. Supposedly, all the deaths were instantaneous. Keisha tried to find comfort in knowing that Carl and Pamela had been happy at the end, coming home from a pleasant evening, secure in their love for each other. But she grieved their deaths and wished she had let herself love them more.

Nanna was a comfort: warm and kind, but always pragmatic. It was a hard time, and she would have been completely alone without Nanna. Together they decided that Keisha needed to use the scholarship she’d earned and continue with college. Nanna was always in her corner, with no limitations on what she envisioned Keisha capable of accomplishing. Nanna’s became the home that Keisha visited, the only place she knew she could relax and let the Teflon dissolve.

She was fortunate to go to law school just before the price of admission skyrocketed, so her student loan debts were manageable. After joining Randolf, Patterson in San Francisco, she’d quickly realized that the same qualifications that got her offers at prestigious firms could be leveraged for a different path — law professor. It was satisfying, and she liked the life she’d built. So, what was this deep well of emotion all about?

Do we ever stop needing to prove ourselves, she wondered. Do we ever relax and feel deeply secure in our lives? She’d earned professional legitimacy, and she liked her work. But what about other aspects of her life-love, possibly a family? Her friend Yasmine was a successful attorney, married with a beautiful family, and she didn’t seem to suffer from self-doubt. Keisha wasn’t sure whether she envied Yas or felt relieved not to be juggling so many balls in the air. She might want a messier, more complex life. But that meant relinquishing control, and she had so many reservations about that.

She’d already walked about ten blocks and had come full circle back to the house. Maybe being in this new place was a means to becoming more grounded and comfortable with herself. In any case, Keisha had had more than enough introspection for the moment. It was getting cold, and it was time to get back to the party.

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Anna was in conversation with a lean, silver-haired guy, probably around her age. He had a nicely shaped goatee and a face that reminded her a little of Brad Pitt, the older, sexy version. He’d lived in Oakland for years before moving to Humboldt. An artist, getting ready to have a show open: a collection of his new pieces, encaustic on wood. This was a medium far bolder than the watercolors Anna had experimented with. She was definitely finding herself intrigued by the art around here.

Was the guy flirting with her? Deep-blue eyes with a crinkle, tall, broad shoulders, curly hair pulled back in a ponytail-he was seriously good looking, and unless Anna was mistaken, he was turning on the charm. It had been a while since Anna had engaged in flirtation of any kind, but just as she started wondering what this vibe was, and whether she wanted to be part of it, a woman came up behind them. Putting her hand on his arm with a distinctly proprietary air, she looked directly at Anna with a challenging glint in her eyes, evidently intending to establish her territory. The message couldn’t have been clearer: Back off, he’s taken.

Anna found herself pasting a pleasant expression on her face and backing away. “Great to meet you both,” she said blandly. “I look forward to seeing you — both — at the Arts Alive opening. My friend and I are planning to be there.” I am conceding your clear ownership of the good-looking artist.

The other woman watched Anna leave, not concealing a victorious gleam. Anna felt a surge of amusement. What a reminder that attractive men are always in short supply, she told herself. And what a thin veneer of convention separates us from other primates — seriously, that was like watching monkeys at the zoo. I guess we are all animals when it comes down to it, she thought. At least no one at the party was actually urinating on bushes. A sudden vision of monkeys with bright-pink bottoms picking lice from each other’s heads came into her mind and she could barely suppress a snort of laughter.