(We both order wine-we’re bonding already.) Wagman came over to Ecco from Crown (he was at Random House for 11 years) when Denis Lehane moved from Morrow. Wagman has been at Ecco for two-plus years, he tells me over lunch at Augustine in the Financial District. Weed sent it out to 20 publishers and “had offers within 24 hours.” The winner, after an auction that was called for the day before the presidential election, was Zach Wagman at Ecco. The original story, Weed says, had three points of view: Lucy, Alice, and a policeman who dropped out by the time the manuscript was ready for its close-up. Tangerine is told from the alternating viewpoints of Alice and Lucy.

There were many overnight calls as Weed and Mangan refined the manuscript and produced two drafts over four months. Working on the revision, Weed says, was crazy because of the time difference. Mangan had just moved to Dubai to teach at the university there. Weed gave the manuscript to Dana Murphy, her former assistant and now an agent, as a second reader. “After those 10 pages, I wanted more, and asked for the whole manuscript, which I devoured.” Weed devours thrillers, so the stage was set for her to notice Mangan’s pitch letter (it was terrific, Weed says) and the first 10 pages of her book. “I must look at the list twice a week to see what’s there,” she tells me. Like most literary agencies, the Book Group receives plenty of over-the-transom submissions, and Weed religiously checks the slush pile (not something at the top of most agents’ and editors’ to-do lists). The book has been a sensation from the moment it was sent to publishers, and when a colleague mentioned it and I started talking to the people involved, I got involved and couldn’t resist the story of Tangerine’s acquisition or the people behind it.ĭuring a meet-and-greet at the Book Group, I chat with Elisabeth Weed, a partner, and, it turns out, the agent representing Tangerine. She’s destined to shake things up, especially since Alice is almost housebound: the city has her paralyzed with ennui and fear. Alice is the English rose with a trust fund and a ne’er-do-well husband Lucy is the former Vermont scholarship girl who shows up uninvited on Alice’s Tangier doorstep. The girls are wearing hose in the blistering heat. It’s 1956, with the rumblings of Moroccan independence about to mark the end of Tangier as an international zone. The Moroccan city of mystery and dark doings is also the setting for Christine Mangan’s debut novel, Tangerine, about two young women who reunite after an unusually close college roommate experience at Bennington that included a life-altering tragedy.

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