Eleven-year-old Toby Steiner wants to do normal things on his vacation. He wants to hike and race his bike down the hill. He wants to learn to fish out on the lake. He doesn’t want to return to the children’s hospital where his painful cancer treatment finally ended. When Toby starts spending time with Pearl, a spunky old woman who lives on a nearby farm, and Blossom, her broken-down cow, he sees all the more reason to keep the new lump on his side a secret from his parents. From Pearl he discovers the beauty of poetry, and from Blossom he just might uncover the meaning of life.
What I've learned in all the years since I began writing is that each of us has at least one special story to tell. Some stories are sad, some funny, but all are as unique as our fingerprints. We are storytellers, every one of us. Some of us just have to write those stories down. I didn't always want to be a writer though. What I longed for most was to be an ice skater, but when I was fifteen I moved with my family from New Jersey to California and there went the ice.
My first short story began with a journal entry written when I was nineteen, after a close friend of mine met with a tragic accident. Many years later, that same story became the basis for my first novel, How Far Would You Have Gotten If I Hadn't Called You Back . Eight novels have followed, with three more to come in the next few years. Writing is the hardest work I've ever done, but by far the most fun.
