A poignant novel about a lifelong friendship, this is the story of Barbara and Marilyn, who once shared an idyllic childhood in the modest Riggs Park neighborhood of Washington, DC. Now, at age 58, each is dealing with a crisis - Marilyn with recurrent breast cancer, Barbara with a difficult relationship with a man. Yet both feel driven to return to the old neighborhood together to solve a decades-old mystery that still haunts them. The heart-wrenching secret they discover tests their friendship. Will it also shatter the resilience that got them through the repressive social mores of the 1950s, the white flight from the city, the years of feminism and anti-feminism and child-rearing? Or will it give them the strength to move on?
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
I started writing when my first two children were toddlers, we were living in a tiny apartment in West Virginia where I knew no one, and my husband and I were sharing one car. I got out only a few days a week and desperately needed some "adult" work for those long, homebound afternoons. When I volunteered to write a press release for the humane society, it appeared in the local paper, complete with my byline. I was hooked! I think I've written something almost every day in the 30+ years since.
I started out as a freelance newspaper journalist -- something even a stay-at-home mom could do -- and spent six years teaching myself to write fiction (six years of rejections!) before my first stories began appearing in magazines like McCall's, Good Housekeeping and Seventeen, which published lots of fiction in those days, and in literary magazines like The Carolina Quarterly.
I wrote my first novel, SAFE PASSAGE, after the youngest of my four children went to school, and I've been writing novels ever since. In 1995, SAFE PASSAGE became a movie starring Susan Sarandon, a great thrill, and many of the other books have received various recognitions and awards. But the greatest thrill has been the privilege having a long, satisfying career that has also let me spend so much time with my family. What more could any writer want?
