Stacy Sivinski has been promoting her new book, “The Crescent Moon Tea Room,” nationwide. But Harrisonburg, the last stop on her tour, was the one she was looking forward to the most.
After all, this is where her parents live. Also, her 10th-grade teacher, all of whom showed up Nov. 24 for her reading at Parentheses Books.
Sivinski is a writing and literature professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Her areas of expertise include sensory studies and 19th-century women’s writing. “The Crescent Moon Tea Room” is her first novel, although she has another book out on Appalachian-themed fairy tales.
“I’ve always been really invested in magic and narratives about women in magic in particular. And the kind of agency and power that comes from that.”
The idea for her new book came a few years ago when she was working on her doctorate at Notre Dame. She and her friends, all of whom were into tarot cards, took a trip to New Orleans.
“I wanted to get my tea leaves read at a shop called ‘Bottom of the Cup,’” she said. “While I was waiting, I asked the guy at the front, I asked him, ‘Can you tell me about the history of the shop?’”
As it turns out, the shop was opened in the 1920s by a pair of sisters-in-law. They wanted to be financially independent, and that was an opening.
Back then, it was illegal to provide fortune-telling in New Orleans. So they found a workaround — people would come in and buy the tea, and the reading was on the house.
“They still have that on the sign,” Sivinksi said.
As for the reading, the fortune teller told her that she would meet a handsome man.
“And I did,” Sivinski said, pointing out to the audience. “And then, at the end of the reading, he told me that I had a gift and was going to share it with the world. And that’s what really encouraged me to start writing.”
Sivinksi now had an idea. What if she did a story about a tea room like that? And what if witches owned the place?
She returned to Notre Dame and did her research on tea rooms. She started writing the novel as a way to distract herself away from her dissertation. She said her book became a way to write and warm her way up to working on her Ph.D.
“And by the end of that, I had a dissertation and the draft of the novel. So that worked out pretty well, being a procrastinator,” she said.
The book is about three witch sisters who own an enchanted tea shop in 19th-century Chicago. They find out that they’re cursed to separate. And further, they have to help three other witches find their own destiny.
“So the key themes are sisterhood and navigating sisterhood. This desire to grow out, be independent, and figure out their purpose and passion while remaining grounded at home,” Sivinski said.
The idea is that the book should feel like a warm hug, she said.
“The Crescent Moon Tea Room” came out in October. She is now wrapping up a second book, “The Witching Moon Manor,” which will be released in October 2025.
Sivinski grew up in Massanutten and went to Spotswood High School.
Family reunion
For Sivinski, the event was like a family reunion. Her parents were there, as was her 10th-grade teacher at Spotswood.
“She was delightful. She was always upbeat, and she was very, very smart, said Karen Leigh Leigh, her teacher. “A good reader and a writer.”
Her mother, Tonya Sivinski, said her daughter was always exceptional. As the middle child, she was always “the quiet child.”
“But when she would speak, everyone would listen. So it was always really thoughtful or funny when she would speak,” Sivinski said. “There was a lot of thinking going on in there. She was a delightful child.”
Sivinksi recalled one incident when Stacy was 7 years old. Her two siblings were on either side of her as they were driving.
“She said she wanted to be a judge when she grew up. And she would have two dogs, Justice and Liberty. And I said, ‘Stacy, you’re going to be listening to people argue all day. And she said, ‘And that would be different from what, Mom?’ as she looked at her brother and her sister,” Tonya recalled.
Another recollection was that when Stacy was in second grade, she scored as gifted in math and at a special ed level in reading. That surprised her, and it took a bit of sleuthing to figure out that Stacy was skipping ahead to see how the story ended. As a result, she missed all the stuff the testers were looking for.
The teachers made her slow down, and she was caught up by the end of the year and an entire grade level above the other kids.
“And from then on, she got every academic award every year, especially in reading. So thanks to good teachers along the way, we have this gifted author now,” Tonya Sivinski said.
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