MARY NELSON CARTER

Mary Carter was the daughter of a well-to-do sea captain and ship owner. He moved his family to Fairfield, Connecticut, from New York City, after making a good fortune for himself in the coastal shipping trade. Mary spent her early years in New York, and it is here that she married a Union Navy doctor, also from New York, during the in 1863, as the Civil War raged. They relocated to Philadelphia not long afterward where her husband Charles Carter set up a medical practice.

After vacationing several summers in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, they fell in love with the area, and relocated there in the 1870s. Now a resident, Mary became intent on improving the literacy and general education of the mountain children living around the town. She spent many days visiting with the mountain folk, convincing parents of the need to have their children in school. It was at this time that she began her writing career. As she traveled the area, she collected stories of everyday life, and life during wartimes, from the old folks she met. The area was changing quickly and the old culture was being pushed out by a wave of new residents, and Mary set about recording what she could before it was gone. In 1900, her stories were published as a book titled, “Phases of Life Where the Galax Grows.” Originally released as a three-volume set of “stories of the south,” the book is a collection of actual and fictionalized narratives she collected.

As part of her ongoing literacy crusade, she organized and opened the area’s very first free lending library, called appropriately the, Lend-A-Hand Library. Originally housed in a building she had put on the lawn beside her home, the library has survived and grown over time, and is the foundation of the regional library system of Boone County, North Carolina.

It is not known when she began her work on the story that was to become, “A Fox in Paris.” But, the book was unfinished at the time of her death in Blowing Rock in 1908.

PERRY VAYO

Perry is the great, great, grandson of Mrs. Carter. He is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and St. Lawrence University. He has been a writer and film-maker in both creative and corporate environments ever since.

Perry conceived Infonouveau in 2011 after stumbling upon the notes for “A Fox in Paris” while looking through boxes of old papers inherited from a relative. Wanting to save the crumbling pages from inevitable destruction he set to transcribing them. It quickly became clear that there was the foundation of a timeless and valuable story in that stack of old pages, and the decision was quickly made to move beyond simply transcribing story note, to actually finishing the story. The birth of the multi-media eBook format presented the perfect opportunity to not only save this old family treasure, but re-imagine it for a new generation of readers in an entirely new way. The result is “A Fox in Paris” and Infonouveau. This is the second title from the company, and just the beginning of what’s planned.