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In a nearly four-decade journalism career, Nancy Townsley saw a lot of changes in the news industry. When she began at the Newberg Graphic in 1980, she typed her stories on an IBM Selectric and developed film in a darkroom. By the time she retired in 2017 from the Forest Grove News-Times, the internet had overhauled nearly every aspect of gathering and distributing news.
Townsley has taken her professional life experience and used it as the foundation for her first novel, Sunshine Girl (Heliotrope Books, 315 pages, $19.50), which she will discuss at Broadway Books on its Tuesday, April 22, publish date. Sunshine Girl is a fictionalized account of the evolution of print journalism, as told through a multigenerational family story with three generations of reporters. The book is largely set in Oregon, with some scenes in Alaska and Northern California.
Townsley worked at a variety of community newspapers during her career, many of which became part of the Pamplin Media Group, including the Lake Oswego Review and Beaverton Valley Times. She writes about changes in the newsroom with authority, though few of the newsroom plot twists are positive. The characters in Sunshine Girl face layoffs, having to charge for obituaries for the first time (“bread from the dead,” despairs Mina, one of the main characters), and their work being disparaged as fake news. All of the journalism drama happens alongside a sweeping family story centering on Eliza Donovan, the titular Sunshine Girl, who follows her absentee father into the news profession and ends up investigating secrets of her own family.
From initial idea to publication, Sunshine Girl took about eight years to complete. Townsley is already halfway through writing her second novel. A former marathoner, she uses running as the metaphor for the difference between writing newspaper articles—she did about five to 10 a week—and spending eight years on a book. The first is a sprint, the second is more like an ultramarathon. “They’re both cool in their own ways,” she says.
In addition to engaging anyone interested in local media and the print journalism profession, Townsley says Sunshine Girl has broad appeal.
“I really hope that anyone—journalist, not journalist, of any political stripe—that really thinks truth matters, I think would be interested in this story.”
GO: Nancy Townsley speaks about Sunshine Girl at Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway. 503-284-1726, broadwaybooks.net. 6 pm Tuesday, April 22. Free.
