I’m pondering a small problem with my upcoming e-book, Troll Valley. And I thought, hey, I’ll crowdsource it to the world’s smartest people, the few, the proud who read Brandywine Books.

Our own Phil Wade has been applying his considerable graphic skills to creating a cover, based on a photograph I took of the Gunderson House, the house in my home town (Kenyon, Minnesota) which inspired the house where the main characters of Troll Valley live.

Friends, this is going to be an awesome cover. I know the word “awesome” is overused, but I mean it literally. Or almost literally. Anyway, it’s great. Phil took a bright, sunny picture, ran it through some filters, and turned it into a dark, numinous sort of thing, with extras that you’ll just have to wait to see. Almost identical to what I envisioned, and much better than I dared hope.

But here’s where the problem comes. We’re laying it out with my name where it belongs (at the top). And the title, somewhat larger, near the bottom.

And it occurred to me that most books include some kind of tag line, a teaser to give people a hint what sort of story they’re looking at here.

I’m trying to come up with a tag line that will suggest the kind of weird book this is. Here’s where I solicit your help.

But you need something to work with. A short synopsis of the story:

The story begins in the year 1900, in southeastern Minnesota. The hero and narrator is a young boy, Chris Anderson. He’s a farmer’s son, but an unusual one. For one thing, he has a deformed arm. For another, he has a fairy godmother (not the Disney kind). He’s also bedeviled by apparitions—red, pointed Norwegian caps which dance around him on the ground when he allows himself to get angry (for which reason he always stuffs his feelings. Sort of the perfect Norwegian).

His father, an amateur inventor, devises an agricultural implement that makes him wealthy, and the whole family moves to town, into the fancy house featured on the book cover. Then, as Chris experiences various adventures, both mundane and supernatural, he grows up and falls in love with a girl who (he is certain) can never return his feelings because of his deformity. There’s also plenty of opportunity to track the political and social changes of the time, as Chris’ mother gets more and more involved in the Evangelical/Progressive politics of the time, notably Prohibition and Feminism. Eventually all the men of the family flee to the wild west, even Chris at last (though he leaves not because of his mother, but because of a perceived rejection by the girl he loves). He’s reunited with his brother and father in Colorado, and there confronts the Red Caps at last, something that increases his self-confidence but depletes his virtue.

Going home, he makes some disastrous choices, and guidance from his Fairy Godmother is needed before things get resolved.

OK, that’s the kind of story it is. Chris speaks more or less in my voice, so that should give you the flavor the thing.

Here’s the two tag lines I’m considering:

“A Norwegian Lutheran Fairy Tale,” or

“A Norwegian-American Fairy Tale.”

I’m trying to shoot for a sort of semi-comic vibe, but not too comic. I’m hoping the tag line will suggest a supernatural tale sort of in the vein of Garrison Keillor.

Which do you prefer?

Or do you have something better?

I’m open to suggestions.

If somebody’s got a really great suggestion, there might even be a free copy of the e-book in it for you.