By day, he is a popular instructor of English Literature at Tahoma Senior High School.
By night, he is a craftsman of popular fiction that is reaching a national audience.
Jeff Heil balances the demands of his dual passions with seeming ease. This past
December, under the penname J. D. Heil, he released his first fantasy adventure,
Legends and Heroes: The Tale of the Taskmaster, both in soft cover and in the expanding
e-book formats. Based on stories that Heil and his older brother, Steve, invented
as they were growing up in the neighboring community of Kent, the book has elicited
a fierce response, amassing a five-star average user rating on the Amazon retail
website and a stream of heady reviews. Legends and Heroes is a pleasing combination
of “Tom Sawyer and Lord of the Rings, all rolled up in one,” one reader has commented.
From early on there was little doubt where Heil’s future lay. At the end of his
freshman year in high school—the same grade that he taught at Tahoma Junior High
for eight years before relocating to the Senior High in September—a teacher penned
in his yearbook that he looked forward to reading in print some day the stories
that Heil had been producing. The remark stands as a testament to the power of words
and the influence that teachers can have on their students. “I took it pretty seriously,”
Heil recalls. “I've always had ideas about stories, and I've always loved to write,
so I guess at some level, I've wanted to be a writer for a very long time, but ninth
grade really kindled the flame.”
Like all writers, Heil draws inspiration and sustenance from those masters of the
pen (and now keyboard) who have preceded him. Although his own reading leans more
towards poetry than prose—William Stafford and Pablo Neruda are two of his favorites—it
was indeed Mark Twain and his classic The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that was
the first book that Heil read that he “really loved.” Casting a long shadow during
the writing of Legends and Heroes were C. S. Lewis and L. Frank Baum, authors who,
Heil contends, “knew how to write a story that had mythic weight yet was light,
fun, and simple to read.” Also influential, though not so much in Legends and Heroes,
is the “conversational humor” and “biting commentary” that infuses the writings
of the American Indian author Sherman Alexie—such as that found in his The Absolutely
True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007). Heil also admires what he considers “the
pure simplicity of descriptions and dialogue” of John Steinbeck.
Set in late-1940s Appalachia and aimed at a middle school readership, Legends and
Heroes: The Tale of the Taskmaster, traces the adventures of three twelve-year-olds:
Mira, Eli, and Gavin. After Mira coaxes the boys into exploring an abandoned coal
mine with her, they end up trapped inside. Scrambling to their rescue is the legendary
frontiersman the Georgia Peach, accompanied by his trusty and talking sidekick,
the raccoon Big Paw. But in escorting the kids to safety, they are led into a portal
that transports them into another dimension. Having been flung far below the surface
of the Red Desert, they become enslaved in the caverns of the Taskmaster, a villain
obsessed with locating the Cave of Treasures and the Orb of Destiny that lies inside.
The orb is said to bestow great power on its possessor, which the Taskmaster hopes
to use to vanquish his nemesis: a band of freedom fighters known as the Heroes.
Readers at this point are confronted with a series of questions that must be resolved:
Can the kids escape from the clutches of the Taskmaster? Can they outwit his army
of giants and stone people? Will they ever see the Blue Ridge Mountains again?
According to Heil, his book is meant to be “purely fun—a bit of an homage to kids’
books of the past” such as “Treasure Island or even the Narnia books, which, though
they had some darkness under the surface, stayed away from the kind of intense psychological
realism that we see in just about everything written for young readers these days.
“There is something to be said for gritty realism,” Heil admits, “but it isn’t much
fun and sometimes ruins an otherwise promising story.” Heil purposely tried to scrub
his narrative clean of all “glumness, gloominess, and intense psychological trauma.”
Because of that, his heroes are “kind of goofy, the villains aren't really all that
serious, and deeper struggles are hinted at rather than explicitly exposed and explored.”
In brief, Legends and Heroes is “just a fun read” that will appeal to anyone who
likes “adventure, humor, and colorful, fanciful characters and locations.”
Word of the publication of Legends and Heroes began to circulate a couple months
ago and already it has attracted a substantial following. Students at the senior
high are selecting it as one of their “choice” reads in English classes and tutorials
and the Tahoma School District has added it to their seventh grade curriculum in
the middle schools. Nancy Skerritt, the director of Teaching and Learning for the
district, has described Legends and Heroes as brimming with characters that are
“truly unique and engaging,” a plot that is “fast paced with interesting twists,”
and messages that “hold simple truths that are worth remembering.” The result, she
concludes, is a tour de force that “fantasy lovers will want to read.”
There is a recurring question rumbling through the building fan base of Legends
and Heroes. Is there a sequel in the works? People want to know. Heil remains coy
on the subject, but if the rousing response to this first volume is any indication,
future fun and exciting adventures await this remarkable and memorable cast of characters.
Pictured: Jeff Heil in his classroom at Tahoma Senior High School. Heil teaches
English Literature to juniors. Image courtesy Shanan Hopp.
Cover of the fantasy adventure Legends and Heroes: The Tale of the Taskmaster. The
book is available via grasslakepublishing.com as well as through the Amazon and
Barnes and Noble websites.
By Cary Collins - Posted on February 14, 2012