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OPEN BOOK Column

and sent Osteen the book. “I was flattered
when Bob called,” she tells me. “He simply
said, ‘There’s this kid, and he’s the best in my
class.’ ”
Osteen had previously read a story of
Wise’s, “The Farm,” about a Jewish boy from
Boston meeting his Southern girlfriend’s par-
ents in Georgia. “I’m from the South, and I
still remember this scene at the dinner table
where they are saying grace, holding hands,
and at the end of the prayer, the father adds,
‘Shalom,’ ” she says. “I was thinking I should
sign this guy up right now. Spencer finds
your comfort zones and boots you out of
them. I think of him as a less mean Philip
Roth.”
She read the manuscript at the end of
March 2016, and they started working
together. “The novel had so much going for
it: father-son relationship, coming of age,
romance, and the world of Chinese factory
workers, which is a world we never think
about.” Despite all that, the novel didn’t sell
on its first round out. After revisions, Osteen
sent it to only one editor, John Glynn at
Hanover Square Press, who told her, “Hold
this for me—I’ll get right back to you.”
Hanover is a new imprint under Harlequin’s
umbrella, formed in November 2016, with
Peter Joseph as editor. Glynn arrived there in
April 2017 after five years at Scribner, where
he’d worked on an eclectic list of fiction and
nonfiction. “It was a dream to get to shape a
list from the ground up,” he says about his
new gig.
The Emperor of Shoes was Glynn’s first acqui-
sition. He was looking for the perfect book
and is convinced he’s found it. “It’s fiction
with a pulse,” he says, and “it’s a subject that
is underrepresented in fiction—it felt timely
and prescient.” (When he received the manu-
script, he had just read about labor practices at a Chinese com-
pany that produces Ivanka Trump–branded shoes.) Glynn
appreciated the book’s authenticity, that it was anchored by
Wise’s experiences of China as a gweilo (a Cantonese slang term
that literally means “ghost man”).
Glynn bought North American rights in May 2017 for ”a
modest amount” (Wise was thrilled) and got first serial rights
for an excerpt in Narrative magazine. The book pubs in June in
the U.S. and July in the U.K. with No Exit Press.
From l.:
The publication of Emperor is a trifecta of begin-
Duvall Osteen,
nings: a debut novel, a new imprint, and a young
John Glynn
agent. The stars converge. ■
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