Silent Partners
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Love and murder, Texas style
INTERVIEW BY MARTIN BRADY
With America currently enduring the misappropriations and malfeasance of the Enron scandal, it's easy enough to hearken back just a few years -- to those glorious '80s and '90s when our country was gripped by graft and corruption, first involving the savings and loan industry and then Whitewater.
Elizabeth Jeffett's first novel takes you there. In Silent Partners, Jeffett -- formerly a special events marketing executive and consultant with a background in women's professional sports -- explores the 1995 world of lucrative oil leases and big-time real-estate deals, her characters jet-setting easily between Denver and Dallas. The plot features posh settings, high-powered moneymaking, some tense relationships, an unsolved murder, a manipulative U.S. senator and the dark specter of organized crime. "The characters are composites of people you might read about," says the author, whom we caught by phone in an airport waiting room on her return to the States from Puerto Rico. Most importantly, her book focuses on women in business. "My main characters are female entrepreneurs who are high-powered and well-educated," says Jeffett. "There are women who want to read about women who do what they do. With female business partners, in particular, there is a special bond. I was trying to capture that." Alex Sheridan Blake is Jeffett's protagonist. She's a likable and attractive 30-something lady, all right, but alas, she's married to Steve Blake, who looks good on paper, but is too controlling to make an agreeable husband -- especially for dealmaker Alex. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the past continue to haunt Alex, whose best friend and business partner, Chris Welbourne, was mysteriously murdered about 10 years earlier. Then there is the real romantic match of her life, Colt Forrester, who hovers patiently in the novel's background. Still, it is the relationship between Alex and Chris -- and women in business in general -- that is the focal point of Jeffett's tale. "Chris was everything to Alex," says Jeffett. "That relationship represented a lot to her. Sometimes a business partner can be closer than a spouse. It can be very traumatic to lose a business partner." For those readers who like to see glamorous characters cavorting in glamorous places, Jeffett has no problem effectively setting her scenes. For example, she writes: "A hot tub at the center billowed a smokestack of steam into the frigid night air, and a warm yellow fire danced in the frosty glass of wide windows. A blanket of twinkling lights lay below them -- Aspen. Across the valley town on Ajax Mountain, the tiny bright headlights of a snowcat plowed its way, grooming the ski runs for the morning. And the snow kept coming down as the four women built towering dreams late into the night. They were all young and free with relentless spirits. Nothing could stop their success." Jeffett, whose previous writing experience primarily involved public relations, marketing and newsletters, spent about four years working on Silent Partners, completing the manuscript in-between caring for her two small children. Besides receiving support from associates and colleagues in the business community, Jeffett was also encouraged to keep working by former Random House president Phil Pfeffer. She also received editorial guidance from independent Nashville editor Jan Keeling. "I'm a businessperson at heart," Jeffett says. "My business background helped. I also tried to do my homework." The publisher of Silent Partners is Elton-Wolf Publishing, an independent Seattle company. Jeffett believes this was a good fit for her first literary effort. "As a new novelist," she says, "I was very concerned that the book be marketed properly. I didn't think I'd have the kind of clout I'd need for that if I was published by a larger company." Now, she says, aided by her own promotional efforts, she hopes to sell the film rights. Silent Partners effectively evokes images of popular television series such as Dallas and Dynasty, yet its specific focus on women executives and serious business dealings gives it a weightier sensibility. It certainly fits comfortably into the publishing niche regarded as page-turning commercial fiction.
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