An author with roots in southeast Missouri and life experience in Perry County has written a novel based on the region.
“Blue Hydrangea”, written by Jim Harryman under the pen name “Allen James” is based in the fictional Missouri town of Atwood, which Harryman said is based on his former residence of Farmington.
“I lived there for about 20 years teaching school and I had a private counseling practice,” Harryman said. The house that I lived in was an old Victorian farmhouse, it had some character to it, and it sparked a thought of a novel.”
Harryman, who taught English and creative writing, said the book is a psychological thriller that follows protagonist Trevor Lee, a psychotherapist who moves into an old Victorian home and becomes “entwined in the story of the Chinese folklore of the blue hydrangea growing outside.”
Harryman worked in Perryville from 2006 to 2015, living in the Perry County village of Longtown. Harryman said his time working in the area has inspired a lot of his writing.
“Those insights into the human mind and the way people process and the shadows that we hide within our psyche were brought out through the novel,” he said.
The original idea for “Blue Hydrangea” came in 1990. Harryman, now retired and living in his hometown in Kentucky, said he worked on the novel for years but had lost the files on his computer with his writing, until rediscovering them recently, allowing him to finish the book during his retirement.
“I spent 10 years in Alaska, and during that time, of course, I had some wonderful snowy evenings in a cabin to write,” He said. “And so I continued working on the novels that I had started. But so when I retired fully last year and moved back to my hometown, I decided to spend some time honing those novels that I have been self-publishing.”
“Blue Hydrangea” is the latest of Harryman’s novels, which have been published under various pen names since 1990. He has also written “Reflections” (1990), Murder at Pendale Lodge”, (2025), “Dawson City - The Map Beneath” (2026), “Stage Left” (2026), and “Diary of a DWI: A Year in the Wreckage“ (2026), two non-fiction books; “Alaska: The Indigenous First Peoples” (2026), and “Attention is Destiny: How What We Notice Determines What We Become” (2025).
Harryman said of all the books he has written, “Blue Hydrangea” is the one he is most impressed with upon finishing writing.
“Blue Hydrangea ended up being the book I didn’t think I had in me,” he said. It’s very difficult to write a novel that large and stick with it and have it make sense to you. So through the past 30 years, being able to draw from different experiences, my time in Perryville, living in Longtown, how we are able to utilize experiences and people and environments from our lives to tell a story and make up a story that other people can learn from and get lost in. That’s of course my goal is to tell stories and I think it’s a good story that a lot of people relate to.”
The book, and all of Harryman’s books, are available to purchase at Lulu.com.
