What happens when a writer is so insistent about seeing her first novel published, she actually comes back from the dead?
Find out in Silverheels, a comedy about the U.S. book publishing business -- and the way one story helps to reconcile four generations of a remarkable family.
After finding what they believe to be the Great American Novel buried in their cellar, Joe and Marilyn Whitmore entrust the long-lost masterpiece to their estranged daughter, Samantha – 39-year-old president and publisher of Empire Books in New York City. After reading only a few chapters, "Sam" concludes that Silverheels is unpublishable nonsense and refuses to have anything more to do with it. This moment of insight is furiously disillusioning for Sam; the author of Silverheels was her beloved and legendary great-grandmother.
But an unnerving discovery provokes Sam into reversing course. She decides Empire Books will put out a few copies of a Silverheels paperback. It will go completely unnoticed, she supposes, but will delight her family by fulfilling the half-century-long dream that the manuscript be published by a major New York house. In this way, Sam assumes she can spare her family's feelings, spare herself and Empire any embarrassment by association with the title, and allow Silverheels to die with quiet dignity.
Because of its bizarre provenance, however, the rest of the Whitmore family remains certain that the story must be destined to become a highly-acclaimed blockbuster. And the long-since-deceased author of Silverheels has no intention of letting her book simply die. Catastrophically misjudged and underestimated by everyone, Silverheels turns out to be something that neither Sam nor her family had ever imagined.
