Jim Turner enjoys a comfortable life and immense success as a writer of crime fiction until his grandfather hands him a golden pen - "Type all the stories you want, son, but when you're ready to put life on a page, use this." Accepting the quest to finish the love story his grandfather had once begun to live then lost on a remote peninsula in Illinois, Jim defies his editor's resistance and his own fears he will find nothing to substantiate his grandfather's illusions of heroic love, and travels to Grove, Illinois. Hoping to preserve his edge as a crime writer while researching tales of the heart, Jim arranges to interview a snitch who claims knowledge of one of Hitler's deserters. Jim's ignorance of love is apparent when he encounters a beauty who calls herself Chastity. His inexperience with true criminals is obvious when he faces the snitch. Chastity is engaged. Can he type her fiancé out of her story and himself in? The snitch is murdered. Can he retract the article he typed for The Times? As Jim faces love, peril, and what real heroes are made of, only his grandfather's pen can write the true story.
Jim Turner enjoys a comfortable life and immense success as a writer of crime fiction until his grandfather hands him a golden pen - "Type all the stories you want, son, but when you're ready to put life on a page, use this." Accepting the quest to finish the love story his grandfather had once begun to live then lost on a remote peninsula in Illinois, Jim defies his editor's resistance and his own fears he will find nothing to substantiate his grandfather's illusions of heroic love, and travels to Grove, Illinois. Hoping to preserve his edge as a crime writer while researching tales of the heart, Jim arranges to interview a snitch who claims knowledge of one of Hitler's deserters. Jim's ignorance of love is apparent when he encounters a beauty who calls herself Chastity. His inexperience with true criminals is obvious when he faces the snitch. Chastity is engaged. Can he type her fiancé out of her story and himself in? The snitch is murdered. Can he retract the article he typed for The Times? As Jim faces love, peril, and what real heroes are made of, only his grandfather's pen can write the true story.
Seth Linden belonged to the world of publishing. I did as well, and had for several years, as his top crime writing novelist. My sales had soared as America anticipated what appeared to be a second world war brewing overseas; news which failed to erase Seth’s apprehensive scowl as he greeted me. The US rightly reeled between terror and thrill at entering such a major battle, but he reeled at how it or any situation would affect his pocketbook. Seth preferred control internationally and personally and therefore wasn’t going to respond well to the bomb I had come to his office to drop on him today.
“Well, Jim, I presume you are here to announce your next story idea now that the corrupt law enforcement series is finished.” Seth’s wary expression revealed he didn’t presume any such thing. Curly headed, barely over thirty but carrying a slight paunch, he peered across his desk at me through eyeglasses too small for his face. Ours was a writer-vs-editor love-hate relationship we both accepted, and which had worked well for us ever since I began writing for him. I didn’t expect that to hold true for us today.
His uneasiness intensified as I considered the best response. I was the one who had a way with words. Carelessness on my part, and Seth might not survive my announcement that I intended to take a break from crime writing to seek out a different type of story. My grandfather’s story. The only one he never told me. And no matter how unbelievable I suspected it might turn out to be, I would pursue it because he wanted me to.
Seth narrowed one eye. “You didn’t come here for plot chit-chat, did you? I can see it on your face. If you are toying with the idea of enlisting ahead of the draft if America joins this war, let me remind you of what I say every time—You have far more impact with your typewriter here in the States than you would by carrying a rifle overseas in a face-off with Hitler. Trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Seth would lie. He often did. He said whatever it took to keep me writing highly popular crime novels for his publishing house and war-related articles for the Times, New York’s largest newspaper, the latter to convince the government of my usefulness close to home instead of in the army.
In an office that reeked of paper and ink, I settled in for his lengthy reminder that he had turned my stories into America’s distraction from the atrocities in Europe, my face into one people trusted, and my words about other twenty-six-year-old men, or even younger ones, into reasons for the US to rally behind its heroes.
I scratched an imaginary itch through the knee of what I termed fake-tweed slacks, America’s clothing industry rightly shifting its resources to what its soldiers would need if we joined the war. I uncrossed my legs and straightened in the uncomfortable wooden chair. For all Seth’s assurance of my value to the world, he missed the one thing I also had missed for years: my grandfather’s definition of a true hero…
Heroes aren’t heroes because they are clever or brave, but because they love someone or something deeply.
I knew by heart every wise word my grandfather had ever spoken, but not one had I taken to heart. Maybe it was his end-of-life frailty that hit me square in the face the other day, or maybe it was my age. But for the first time, I paid attention to what Grandpa, my hero as a man and as a storyteller, had said—it’s what motivates a man that matters. What motivated him shone deep in his gaze, while what motivated Seth and me was the success my storytelling skills brought our way.
Seth rambled on, deep into his too-familiar monologue about all the good he and I had done, while I kicked myself for time lost with my grandfather. For ignoring what he had inserted into every one of his tales with the hope I would someday understand it—love, or anything to do with the heart. I had inherited his ability to tell a story but not his essence. He claimed it was in me; I just hadn’t found it yet. In truth, I spent little time looking for something that had no place in my books.
Look for the relationship when you write, son. There always is one, whether it is between a man and a woman, a boy and his dog, a sailor and his ship, or a country and its enemy. The most daring conquests involve the heart. There is no battle, no story, until there is heart.
Heart. Not a word found in Seth’s vocabulary or my stories. I twisted in my seat. Grandpa never said outright that my books lacked heart. Rather, he praised every single one for its well-constructed plot. He was a truly good man. When had he begun to look so frail, so sallow…
“Are you listening to me?” Seth frowned across mountains of contracts and manuscripts that cluttered his desktop. “If you are still fantasizing about enlisting, let me remind you that you are too thin to wield a gun. America needs Jim Turner here, not over there.”
I bit back a rebuttal of Seth’s slight against the lanky build I had also inherited from my grandfather, both of us tall and lean with straight hair, mine brown, his face handsome, mine what Seth called a pensive writer’s look that people adored. At least the current style of baggy trousers and blousy shirts cinched tight by a belt looked far better on us than it did on him.
“I heard you,” I semi-lied to Seth’s pointed expression. At least I had heard it before. “I will enlist at some point, so brace yourself, but not yet. I have something else to do first.”
“Whatever it is, I won’t like it. I can tell.” Seth tilted back in his office chair, which let out its usual squeal, causing a fantasy other than the one he worried about to pop into my head—Seth tipping a tad too far and somersaulting backward through his office’s plate-glass window. We were two stories up. He might survive. But someone in New York City’s throng down below might not.
“It has to do with my grandfather…” And what he hadn’t said all these years, as well as the way he looked at me the last time we spoke.
“Oh no, not this again. I like him, I adore him, in fact, but let’s face it. If you listen to Grandpa Turner too much, you will be writing dime romance novels instead of your hard-hitting crime stories that sell like hotcakes.”
A fist formed in my gut. I might be thin, but I could land a punch with words my opponent would be slow to get up from, and Seth deserved it. “Did I tell you my idea for a new captivating storyline?”
“That’s more like it.” Seth righted himself and his chair. “Tell me about that instead.”
“An editor’s body washes up on the bank of the Hudson River.”
Seth stared across his desk at me. “I can see that river from my office, you know.”
“Yes, I do know.”
Silence. The color that had been rising in his cheeks waned. And for a gratifying moment, I let it.
“Relax, Seth. I was just kidding. I can’t imagine anything like that ever happening.”
He didn’t look convinced. Any assurance I offered in this unsettled pre-war climate would sound like lying. The tactic he usually took.
“Forget about it. Sorry I mentioned such a thing. What’s really on my mind is a peninsula somewhere in Illinois. One my grandfather mentioned recently.” Not merely mentioned, but insisted I visit.
It’s in Mountain Grove, Illinois. That is what we called the town back then. Its real name is Grove. For all my stories, Jim, that is the one I never told you. It changed my life.
And Grandpa hoped it would change mine, but he didn’t say that. Neither did I add that I doubted it would. I only told him I would do whatever he wanted. And I meant it.
Seth tensed. His eyes turned beadier behind his glasses. He always feared my life would need a change someday, whereas Grandpa knew it with certainty. He promised I would find my essence, the one difference between him and me, between his stories and mine, on his peninsula. He had looked so feeble, I preferred to stay close to him and write novels, leaving only to enlist someday and head overseas with either a gun as a soldier or my typewriter as a war journalist.
Type all the stories you want, son, but when you’re ready to put life on a page, use this.
Seth truly would throw himself out his office window if I showed him the gold fountain pen my grandfather had given me at that moment. Seth paid me to write death, not life. Gruesome death I typed feverishly day and night. According to Grandpa, the pen had been handed down in our family, none of us ever using it. Not even him, a man of endless tales he loved to share—except for one. The one he wanted me to experience.
Someday, son, something will send your moral compass into a tailspin. Gravity will vanish, and you will fling your guards aside. What has always been singular vision will suddenly become kaleidoscopic. When that happens, grab this pen and write. With blood as your ink, write your heart on the page.
I couldn’t imagine what Grandpa described ever happening to me, but the faraway glint in his eye suggested it had to him. Or at least he believed it had. He held the story close but pressed the pen in my direction. With his end seeming too near, I accepted the gold pen and agreed to go to Grove—or to Mountain Grove, as he called it. I would do it to honor him. Even though we apparently came from a long line of skinny, pensive, potential writers who never had their worlds dumped upside down, never confused right with wrong, and never felt our hearts enough to put them on paper with this particular instrument. He thanked me, the flicker in his eyes assuring me he had experienced every bit of what he described except for the writing part. Which he now bequeathed to me with the pen.
“I knew this would happen someday.” Seth glared at contracts and manuscripts that meant far less to him than mine did. His lips vanished as he pinched them between his teeth. He was an unhappy family man who threw his all into the publishing world, and I was his main bread and butter.
“Look.” He swiped a growing sheen from his forehead. “How about a compromise? You do something for me if I let you go traipsing after some whim.”
“It isn’t a whim.”
“Okay. Then before you go traipsing after some…something or other—I don’t know what—you have to commit part of your time to me. You owe me that much, so tell me where this peninsula is located.”
“In a small town called Grove, a little west of Chicago.” Grandpa had marked it on a map. I would go, no matter what Seth said.
“I hoped you would say close to a big city. Chicago will work.” He leaned to the side and rifled through a drawer, then plopped a file marked “Times Articles” on his desk’s top. I knew that folder well. Hoping to keep me stateside and profitable, Seth had offered my top-selling name as a contributor to them. The introduction had felt safe to him until the relationship swayed toward the new party, the Times calling the shots on my time and article content more and more. If this kept up, maybe someday I really would write about the body of an editor being dumped into the Hudson. A newspaper article instead of fiction. The harrowing account of a discarded third party when three became a crowd.
“I will agree to your compromise if I can write their Randy Reed article. That guy was in Chicago, if I remember correctly, and his story was edgy.” This was my crime-writer side talking, not the side with essence Grandpa wanted me to discover in Grove.
“You will write no such article.” Seth kept the file close to him. “Too risky. That’s why I turned it down when they first mentioned it. There is another suggestion in here about an enlisted man from Chicago who…”
“Reed is the only interview I will agree to.” It appealed to me, but it would to Grandpa also. This was the perfect combination of terror and passion for us—a snitch exposing a love story that could get him and the two lovers killed. “If you want any say in my trip, call the Times. Get a meeting lined up with Reed if no one else has done the story.”
“No one in their right mind would get anywhere near it.” A sheen returned to Seth’s forehead. “You think Hitler’s going to sit quietly when he learns one of his own men slipped a Jewish woman out of one of his camps and escaped with her to the States?”
“My grandfather would call it the ultimate love story.”
“The Times isn’t looking for a love story. Neither am I, and I can’t afford for you to go soft on me. Or get killed.”
“No one who crosses Hitler, even with a typewriter, is soft. Call them. Now. I will make good on the interview, but the rest of my time will be my own.”
Seth muttered something vile as he dialed his connection’s number at the newspaper. This could turn out to be my usual typewriter job. A blood-and-guts story that would hopefully end well. Or it could present the opportunity to use the gold pen, since I expected Grandpa’s peninsula would do less for me than he hoped.
“The article is yours.” Seth practically slammed the handset onto its cradle. He buried his face behind his hands but continued to talk. “The Times said to remind you this is only a tip. Don’t write it as gospel.”
Which meant even the king of newspapers was nervous.
“They will set up an interview with Reed and let us know when and where. Supposedly nothing has changed. Reed still claims Hitler’s soldier took a fancy to a Jewish woman and snuck her out of the country right under his Führer’s nose.”
“Hitler’s man, no matter how heinous he is, loved someone enough to risk his life for her.” The sort of hero Grandpa spoke about. And the cunning mind I always wrote about.
“Cut the love stuff out. Stick to what you’re good at. Anyway, the snitch with the story claims his name is Randy Reed. It’s fake, we’re certain, but go with it. He’s scared.” Seth dropped his hands to his desk. “Can’t blame him. He won’t live if either Hitler or the soldier who betrayed him finds out Reed leaked this story, even if it’s all lies.”
“And they might kill the messenger too. The one who tells the tale.”
Seth looked as if his life was over because he feared mine might be. Ours was a strange relationship. I was more than his bread and butter—he had become fond of me. His glistening forehead buckled into worried furrows as I rose to my feet.
“Find me a hotel the pending war hasn’t shut down or turned into something else yet, in or around Grove,” I said and rapped my knuckles on one of the few bare spots on his desk. So I could find Grandpa’s peninsula before writing about Randy Reed robbed me of the chance to ever learn what my grandfather never told me.
I picked up I Have a Story expecting a nostalgic foray into wartime Americana with a dash of literary ambition. What I didn’t expect was to be drawn into a deeply personal and layered journey about a writer learning how to write—and live—with heart.
Jim Turner, successful crime novelist and reluctant sentimentalist, sets aside his lucrative career to chase a story rooted in legacy rather than profit: a love story his grandfather began living but never finished. The premise is simple, almost wistful—a golden pen passed down as both inheritance and challenge—but the story that unfolds is surprisingly rich, introspective, and far more textured than its romantic hook suggests.
I found the prose to be immersive and smartly paced. The writing is both sharp and occasionally lyrical, especially when exploring Jim’s inner conflict. He’s used to typing bodies and motives, not broken hearts and lost chances. Watching him fumble through matters of the heart—especially when faced with Chastity, a woman already engaged—felt sincere and relatable without slipping into melodrama. His discomfort is genuine, and I appreciated that the story doesn't hand him easy wins.
The subplot involving a murdered snitch and Jim’s attempt to juggle journalistic integrity alongside emotional awakening kept the tension humming. The stakes feel real but never overwhelming, and though the mystery thread isn’t the primary focus, it acts as a solid contrast to the deeper emotional themes. I especially liked how the novel subtly critiques media manipulation and the pressures of "commercial truth" in publishing.
That said, the book isn’t without its minor flaws. Some of the editorial dialogue with Seth—the blustering, money-minded publisher—felt a tad repetitive, and Jim’s slow realization of his own emotional blindness could have been streamlined. The transitions between internal monologue and action also occasionally leaned too heavy into exposition. Still, these moments are forgivable, as they serve a character who’s just beginning to crack his emotional shell.
What truly elevates I Have a Story is the intergenerational bond between Jim and his grandfather. It adds a reflective weight to the narrative and infuses it with warmth. In many ways, this is less a love story between Jim and Chastity, and more a love letter from a grandson to the man who quietly mentored his soul.
Final Verdict:
If you enjoy stories where emotional growth mirrors plot progression, and if you’re drawn to books that blend romance, mystery, and a dash of literary self-reflection, I Have a Story is worth a read. It reminds us that the greatest stories aren’t always the ones that sell best—but the ones that finally tell the truth.