Heather Newton juggles full-time lawyering and a high-profile literary career. A new Asheville book club reads her first novel this month.

by H. Byron Ballard . photo by Matt Rose

The blurbs on the front and back of Heather Newton’s new novel Under the Mercy Trees read like a who’s-who of Southern writers (Tom Franklin, Jill McCorkle). It’s no small feat for a first book. But this is not Newton’s first literary go-round. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies over the years, including the upcoming 27 Views of Asheville. In fact, the 48-year-old Raleigh native started writing at a very early age. “I began creating books of my own as soon as I was old enough to hold a stapler,” she says.

Newton, whose mother was a writer, is part of a collective called The Flat Iron Writers. Their name comes from downtown Asheville’s iconic Flat Iron Building on Battery Park—the place they first met in 1993. (The group includes fiction writers Genève Bacon, Marjorie Klein and others). Since it was published in January this year, Under the Mercy Trees has been selected as a Great Group Reads for the Women’s National Book Association, and it won the prestigious Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award for 2011. Previous recipients include Charles Frazier and Lee Smith. “I feel really fortunate that the novel has been received so well,” she says. “The reviews and other recognition it has gotten affirm that writing really is what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.” This month, a new Asheville group, the Eat Your Words book club, will delve into Mercy Trees and discuss it over dinner on December 15.

Set in Solace Fork, North Carolina, Mercy Trees follows the search for Leon Owenby, who has simply disappeared. Leon’s four middle-aged siblings narrate the search, which takes a Southern family into the dark seeds of their dysfunction, leading the reader into the childhood traumas that have twisted and rent the family.

As if writing a much-talked-about novel weren’t enough, Newton still works full time in a small downtown-Asheville office as a lawyer and mediator. Adding travel and public appearances to her schedule has been a marked change. “Instead of sitting in my office alone, typing, I’ve spent the last ten months doing readings, teaching and laughing with book clubs,” she says. “It’s been wonderful—a nice balance to the adversarial work I do as an attorney.”

After law school in Chapel Hill, Newton settled in Asheville to be near family. Here, she met and married her husband Michael and had a daughter, Madeleine, in 1998. These days, she sets aside Fridays for writing. She spent part of November doing a “blitz” of writing for National Novel Writing Month, typing for two hours a day (mostly). “The ideas really start to burble up when you can immerse yourself daily. I’d love to figure out how to make a daily writing schedule permanent.” Next up, she’s working on a complex tale of women’s friendships, set in Western North Carolina.

For more about Newton, check out heathernewton.net. For details on the Eat Your Words Book Club at Avenue M, which discusses Under the Mercy Trees on December 15, check out www.avenuemavl.com or call 828-350-8181.