Storied Charlotte

Hannah Larrew, one of the co-hosts of the now defunct but deeply missed Charlotte Readers Podcast, recently sent me an email with a tip for my Storied Charlotte blog.  She wrote, “I wanted to touch base with you about a Charlotte author I’m working with, Jonathan Heaslet, whose debut novel, East of Apple Glen, may make for an interesting piece on Storied Charlotte. It deals with several relevant topics, including the role of the church in our culture, LGBTQ inclusion, and sexual assault. He has an interesting background in that he served as a minister for many years, which gave him a unique outlook on organized religion and some of the major issues that can be found within the system.” 

Intrigued, I did a little research on Jonathan (Jon) Heaslet and his soon-to-be released novel. Jon has lived in Charlotte since his retirement from the ministry in 2014, but his novel is set in a small town in Ohio in the heart of Amish country. Jon served as a minister in this part of Ohio. One day a member of the congregation whispered a secret to him involving sexual exploitation in the local community. This secret haunted him for years, and he eventually decided to use it as the starting point for his novel. 

In writing East of Apple Glen, Jon drew heavily on his experiences as a minister. I contacted Jon and asked him for more information about his background and how he came to write East of Apple Glen.  Here is what he sent to me:

I grew up in what is now Silicon Valley. My grandfather once owned a farm that’s now headquarters for Google. My parents sold their house in the 1960s after I left for college. It’s now worth 10-figures. I should be writing you from a Caribbean island instead of a modest home in Charlotte.

My undergraduate degree is from the University of Iowa, mathematics. My wife and I left Iowa City the day we graduated and came to North Carolina, Linda to teach in the Durham City Schools the first year they desegregated and me to earn a master’s in economics at Chapel Hill. 

After a stint in the Army, stationed in Kansas, Indiana, and Fort Bragg I (not Fort Bragg II), I began work with the North Carolina Medicaid Program. An offer from the organization that now goes by Premier Healthcare brought Linda, our son, and me to Charlotte in 1981. 

After ten years at a computer terminal, I longed for a vocation that involved engaging with people. I went on a yearlong sojourn that ended with my answering a call to Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. After being ordained in the United Church of Christ, there followed a call to serve a small church in Amish country Ohio. It was a Swiss-German congregation where historically (as in 125 years), they had alternated between French speaking and German speaking pastors. 

I did a lot of listening, eating a lot of sponge cake, drinking a lot of lemonade, learning that an Amish haystack was both a conical pile of hay and an open-faced sandwich topped with meat, mashed potatoes, all awashed in gravy. I learned to be alert to whispers. In a town of 279 residents, it’s nobody’s business means that it’s everybody’s business.

Amish bonnets do a good job of focusing whispers while hiding faces and lips. A mother approached me regarding an Amish bishop who had sanctioned incest in his district as a means of preventing teenage boys from “going English” (leaving the Amish sect). This mother, who had taken me aside, steadfastly refused any outside intervention by police or social services or any government entity. “We take care of our own” was her pronouncement. She was seeking a different — the proper, can I say? — Biblical exegesis to take to her bishop. 

I never saw her again, but her whispers are etched in my mind. 

Following retirement and return to Charlotte in 2014, I took up writing. Write what you know is the cliche. Write what you have heard is what I began to do. The whispers. The anguish. The losses. The regrets. They eclipsed the weddings and baptisms. For over twenty years, I had been like the Receiver of Memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver.

But the whispers of that Amish mother never left me.

Maureen Ryan Griffin finally sat me down and focused my efforts in her class titled Under Construction. With her help and the perspicuity provided by women in the group, there emerged a novel of abuse, rape, and incest, all shrouded in secrecy: East of Apple Glen.

I wrote the story through the eyes of a young man, Nathan, fatherless and bullied as a child, who escaped his small hometown after college, but is forced to return when his mother and grandmother die unexpectedly. Added to the mix was a childhood friend, herself with a history of abuse, to accompany him on his journey through grief. I intentionally avoided the words “victim” and “survivor” to reinforce that recovery is not a noun, but a verb, as in “surviving.” A day-to-day effort to get beyond trauma.

As with the biblical Nathan, the question was would he have the courage to reveal the truth.

After discussions with Hannah Larrew, we intentionally decided to launch East of Apple Glen in April during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We are hopeful that a novel, my novel, can be a positive supplement to the nonfiction resources for those “surviving” sexual assault.

I am excited to have Nancy Stancill interview me at my book launch at Park Road Books, Saturday, April 26, 2025, at 2 PM.

For readers who want to know more about Jon and his writing career, please click on the following link: https://www.jonathanheaslet.com/

I congratulate Jon on his new novel, and I commend him for shining a light on the often-hidden issue of sexual assault.  East of Apple Glen is not a light-hearted story, but it is a novel that is likely to make a difference in Storied Charlotte and beyond.