Laura Moriarty, a creative writing professor at KU and author of this year's KU Common Book, The

Toward the end of Laura Moriarty’s first novel, the narrator and main character, Evelyn Bucknow, stands on Jayhawk Boulevard, taking in the world around her. After growing up in the fictional Kansas town of Kerrville, she lands in Lawrence amid the bustle of Kansas University.

“When the bells chime, students come out of the buildings all at once, and there are more people walking on the sidewalk than there are in all of Kerrville, maybe more than I have seen in one place in my entire life,” Evelyn observes.

Kerrville and Evelyn might not be real, but the moment would likely be familiar to KU students who grew up in rural Kansas, some of whom graduated from high schools smaller than some KU freshman lecture courses.

This fall KU students across campus will encounter the university and the state of Kansas through Evelyn’s eyes. “The Center of Everything” was picked as the 2014-15 school year’s KU Common Book, an initiative meant to add a social and literary vibe to the first-year experience of KU students.

‘A pinch me situation’

Moriarty, now an assistant professor of English at KU, didn’t grow up in Kansas. As the daughter of a Marine, she moved frequently throughout childhood and has lived in places that, as she describes it, people tend to “have romantic ideas about,” including Hawaii, Montana and Utah.

Moriarty landed in Lawrence at the same point in her life as when Evelyn steps onto the KU campus. When she was 17, Moriarty’s father took a job in Kansas so she could get in-state tuition at KU. “I came down to KU, and I didn’t know anything about it,” Moriarty said. She fell almost instantly in love with Lawrence.

As an undergraduate at KU, Moriarty avoided creative writing classes because she worried they were “indulgent.” Instead she wanted to do something “helpful” and “pragmatic” with her undergraduate work. After considering the pre-med route, she opted to study social work.

She would go on to work as a social worker in Lawrence and Kansas for several years. While working at the Duchesne Clinic, a provider of medical services to low-income uninsured residents of Wyandotte County, Moriarty started to write at night about the people she met there. “You see a lot of really sad stuff,” she said.

Those sketches of life would ultimately develop into the characters of “The Center of Everything.” Soon she returned to KU, this time in the creative writing master’s program to flesh out the book.

This was all more than a decade ago. For the book to now be the center of attention at the university is surreal for Moriarty, and flattering, she said.

“It’s really your dream,” she said. “It’s a pinch me sort of situation. It’s so fun.”

Getting new love for a decade-old novel

The novel opens in the early 1980s with Ronald Reagan campaigning for the presidency on television.

Evelyn, then 10 years old, lives with her single mother in Kerrville, a town that Moriarty based on small towns she knew such as Eudora, Ottawa and Emporia, as well as Bozeman, Mont., where Moriarty went to high school. The book follows Evelyn from girlhood through high school as she narrates a life in Kerrville that is slow but can also be chaotic.

KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little ultimately picked the book based on the recommendation of a selection committee. This was only after the selection committee and another committee whittled down a list of 90 possibilities provided by the Office of First-Year Experience, which manages the Common Book program and sought out recommendations from faculty and students, said Howard Graham, associate director of academic programs with the office.

Throughout the year, Moriarty will tour classes reading the novel and KU will host events related to the book. All incoming KU freshmen can receive a free copy of the book at orientation. But Moriarty likely won’t see any boost to income from Common Book sales because her initial advance on the novel was so large, she said.

By contrast, her most recent novel, “The Chaperone,” sold six or seven times more than Moriarty’s first novel, has been purchased for movie rights, and has taken Moriarty around the country to publicize it.

The hubbub around the Common Book represents more attention than “The Center of Everything” has gotten since its publication, maybe in its life. “It’s going to be interesting to talk about this book that didn’t get as much love,” she said.