You could say Nancy Townsley spent 37 years doing research for her debut novel.

Sunshine Girl, which Townsley launches April 22 at Broadway Books, tells the story of newspaper journalism over several decades through the eyes of three journalists with news ink running through their family tree. Specifically, community news ink – the lifesap of Townsley’s 1980-2017 career. 

Townsley graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in technical journalism in 1980. Within a couple of months, she was working at the Newberg Graphic as the weekly’s sports editor. “Which is really hilarious looking back on it, because the only credibility that I had in that area was having been a high school cheerleader,” she said in a recent interview. 

As at any small-town paper, Townsley soon found herself branching out past her job title. She covered education and city news. She wrote features. She took photos. In that pre-computer era, she tapped out articles on an IBM Selectric and saw them pasted onto page galleys with “X-Acto knives and strange glue.” (If you know the smell of that glue, you know.)

“I loved it,” Townsley said. “I got to understand the value of writing stories that reflected back to our readers and to the community what was happening there. So it was a lot of fun.”

Over the next three decades, Townsley also reported and edited for the Lake Oswego Review, Beaverton Valley Times, and Forest Grove News-Times. She did some work for the Portland Business Journal, too. 

“I enjoyed it a whole lot, until I didn’t enjoy it near the very end, which was when I decided it was a good time to leave, when I didn’t feel like I could give my whole heart to it anymore,” Townsley said. The tenor of newsrooms had shifted. Journalists were being denigrated. The public didn’t seem to appreciate a free press. The intersection of culture and media was getting rough. 

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Townsley retired in 2017, with no regrets. “I couldn’t have asked for a better career, in terms of I’m a person who loves meeting people and getting to the meat of what their stories are,” she said.

She found she couldn’t stay away from those stories. Within a few months of retiring, she had started writing a novel. “I thought, well, let me try fiction. I’ve always been just the facts. Let’s see what this is all about,” she said. The result, eight years later, was Sunshine Girl.

Here are seven things to know about Sunshine Girl.

1. The title refers to Eliza Donovan, whom readers first meet as the young daughter of Martin Donovan, news editor at a Yamhill County newspaper. 

Every day after school, Eliza goes to the newsroom, where she watches her dad do phone interviews and type stories. “She gets bit by the newshound bug early, and the story goes from there,” Townsley said.

2. “I think of Eliza in part as everything that I really wasn’t,” Townsley said. 

As a young Baby Boomer, Townsley said, she didn’t really question what her boss told her to do or how to do it. Eliza, by contrast, doesn’t back away from a fight, especially as she develops as a reporter, if she thinks that handling a story a certain way is important. 

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3. The characters in Sunshine Girl cover some stories that will sound familiar to people who follow Portland-area news closely. 

That’s because the novel is autofiction, blending autobiography and fiction, Townsley said. “I felt I needed to be bold and include some of the stories that most deeply touched me as a human being and as a reporter trying to stay, as we were always taught, objective,” she said. 

4. Townsley’s favorite character is a toss-up between Eliza and Martin. 

“Eliza I love because I feel like she’s probably the most amalgamated character,” Townsley said. “She’s drawn not only from my experience but from my memories of female journos over my career.”

“Martin is lovable but he’s very complicated, maybe more complicated than some people would have patience for,” Townsley said. “He makes misjudgments. He then tries to make up for those transgressions with people that he loves and cares about. He has a very human story.”

5. The most challenging character for Townsley to write was Mina Breckenridge, a young reporter at Martin’s newspaper who becomes professionally and personally entangled with him and his family.

“She’s gung ho for journalism. She does it all. She wants to do a great job,” Townsley said. But early readers said Mina wasn’t very likable. 

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“I kind of clench up when I hear that word,” Townsley said, “but I understood what they were saying.” Mina needed to have redeemable qualities and to grow as a person as the book went on. “So I tried hard to have Mina follow that trajectory and I hope I was successful, but she was a complicated character to write,” Townsley said.

6. Asked what advice she’d give her main characters, Townsley focused on all too human foibles.

She’d advise Martin not to take himself or his father, an Oregon Journal editor whom he revered, so seriously. She’d advise Eliza not to be so hard on her mother. And she’d tell Mina, “Get your act together, girl!” 

“She was always looking for the next best thing, and sometimes the next best thing is not around the corner,” Townsley said. “Sometimes the best thing is the thing you’re in.”

7. Townsley hopes readers come away from Sunshine Girl with a new appreciation for newspapers, especially if they typically get their news and information from other sources. 

“I hope people get a chuckle here and there and that they enjoy it, that they’re enriched by this peek into newsrooms of yore and maybe newsrooms of now,” she said. 

“I hope readers take away the idea that newspaper journalism is an honorable career and a worthy career.” 

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BOOK LAUNCH
What: Nancy Townsley will discuss Sunshine Girl with fellow Portland author Dian Greenwood and Portland writer and book designer Gigi Little, who designed the novel’s cover.
When: 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 22
Where: Broadway Books, 1714 N.E. Broadway St., Portland
Admission: Free
Other events: More appearances by Townsley, including in Portland and Eugene, are here.