B

There’s a human impulse to stare at bright things–Fifth Avenue, Bourbon Street, the Vegas Strip–to the point there’s leftover neon beneath one’s eyelids before lying down for bed.

Attention has shrunk. Artistry comes in little electric hits–five second TikTok dancers, Snapchat shoutouts. Here in Tullahoma there’s a young woman seeking to challenge this trend, somebody still emboldened by long form fiction. Her name is Ella-Gracin Bennett; she’s 15 years-old and just published her first historical fiction novel, “The Candle in the Darkness.” Bennett’s artistic odyssey started in August of 2022 on a journey with her father to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

“I walked through this red box car they had on display,” she said. “I pictured these characters in my brain, this whole scenario going on. I kept seeing them throughout the whole thing. I got out and I said, ‘yep, I’m going to write a book now.’”

So she did. Work on the first draft began in Oct. 2022 while Bennett was only thirteen. The story follows two main characters, Kefir Blau and Esther Weinberg as they vie for survival in Nazi Germany and their time in the Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp. After a year and a half of work, Bennett reached out to the Writers Guild of Tennessee and several of her former teachers from Tullahoma East Middle School to help construct a first draft. The second draft was completed in early 2024, and the novel went live to Amazon on July 7.

Bennett will be having a book signing at Fuel So Good, located at 1407 N Jackson St., on Saturday, Aug. 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. To purchase the book, visit her Amazon page at https://a.co/d/06UlWFc0.