When we think of our small town of Helper, we think of the art scene. We think of the numerous galleries and walks that show off the talents of the local residents. And it all accumulates to the Helper Arts and Music Festival, which has been held for over 20 years. For an aspiring author, the festival, and the town of Helper, seemed like just the setting for a novel about loss, growth and adapting to change.

Tara C. Allred, a best-selling author of multiple books, recently published Helping Helper, the story of a woman who is abandoned by her husband in Helper, a town unknown to her until their car breaks down on the highway five miles away. She must not only learn to deal with the abrupt change in her life, but also to see the possibilities that life, including the town of Helper, has to offer.

Allred first visited the town of Helper in the early 2000s, during the Helper Arts and Music Festival, and was fascinated by the history and the development of the small town, as well as the art revival that was just beginning.

“You come in and you can tell that this town is more than just a quick town and something that … had a place in history, you could feel it,” said Allred of why the town stuck out to her. “And so seeing that, and seeing how rich the history is, and then also because I have lived in Utah and have had relatives from Utah, Helper is very different from the other traditional small towns in Utah, and so I think that really stood out to me.”

Two years later, after not being able to get the town out of her head, she visited again and had the general idea of the storyline behind the novel.

“I had this idea of how a relationship and how that heart of falling in love and being in love had some similarities with a town,” explained Allred. “Seeing Helper at a time when it was just such the social hub of the community and how everyone would come to be a part of what was going on in Helper, and then to have all that die over time because these other towns were turning into ghost towns and Helper then became struggling, it really had this parallel with me of her story of a relationship.”

Allred continued, “The story has this parallel of a town that’s struggling and a woman that’s struggling and how they need to go through change in order to survive and to heal and that was why Helper was just so magical to me for the location, the setting for my book.”

However, because of other work, Allred worked on half of the manuscript of Helping Helper before setting it aside. Over 10 years later, she found the manuscript, began to work on it again, and finished the first draft in November 2015. After editing, rewriting and some more editing, Helping Helper was finally published in March of this year.

While the book is a work of fiction, Allred did leave in a few key locations of the community. Balance Rock Eatery and Pub, which she saw as a social hub of the community, remains in the book under the name “Helper Diner.” Main Street plays a big role in the novel, with most pivotal events happening in the center of town, along with at City Hall. Allred did keep Box Car Gallery as the same name in the book, because “the name of [the] gallery is just perfect,” she explained. However, she did try to keep the characters and the stories fictional.

Helping Helper begins at the end of 1999 and moves into the year 2000 as the story progresses. While uncommon to see a book set over 15 years in the past, Allred thought the time period was important to the storyline, especially since that was closer to when she first visited the town. Also, she explained that there was something “blossoming” in Helper at the beginning of the new millennium, especially with the art revival. She also saw a difference in regards to technology connecting people around the world in the early 2000s compared to present day.

Helping Helper is available for purchase online, but will also soon be available at the Helper Library.