LITMIR.BIZ

      For my mother, Lucille Baratz, one of the world’s greatest

       ladies, and the woman who gave me my first Nancy Drew.

       Mom, if I keep putting off dedicating a book to you,

       will you stay with us forever?

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Epilogue

      About the Author

      No book is ever written in a vacuum, even if it feels that way at times, and this book is certainly no exception, so here come the curtain calls.

      Thanks to Margaret O’Neill Marbury, Rebecca Soukis and the whole RDI team, with special thanks to Keyren Gerlach for going above and beyond.

      Pamela Harty is in a line all by herself for restoring my faith and giving me my shot, all in one go—thank you forever.

      Thanks to the Friday night writing group: Greg Logsted, Jerry Brooker, Andrea Schicke Hirsch, Rob Mayette, Lauren Catherine Simpson. What I want to know is: Who’s bringing the wine next week?

      Thanks to the Monday night reading group: Irene Clarke, Anita Hannan, Cheryl McCaffrey, Jacquie Pugsley, Rebecca Tate and my longtime friend Jeannine Fagan. I’m a better reader, writer and mother because of all of you.

      If I lived forever, I could not thank Sue Estabrook enough for making me a better writer and a better person.

      And if I listed all the friends and family I’m grateful for we wouldn’t be here all day, but we would be here for quite a bit, so suffice it to say you know who you are and by now, you ought to know what you mean to me. That said, I would be beyond remiss not to thank those who are under my roof as I write this:

      Thanks to my niece, Caroline Logsted, for bringing so much unlooked-for joy into our lives; thanks to my daughter, Jackie, who makes me marvel every day, not merely that I have a child, but that I have this child; thanks to my husband, Greg, for being the greatest man who ever lived. Without the three of you, I would be both less sane and less insane; certainly, I would be less loved.

      prologue

      People think it must be easy for you, when they see you out here on the wire.

      They think you don’t know fear.

      But what they never stop to consider is that you know fear better than anybody and your greatest fear is not being here, not taking the chance, not living this life.

      Some people think it’s brave to fight in wars and I suspect it must be true. Some people think it’s brave to go after your career dream and while I wish it were personal experience talking here, I suspect that must be true, as well. But the bravest thing of all, to me, is to love another human being, to take the chance of being disappointed, to risk having your heart broken.

      That’s the wire I’m talking about, the only wire that really matters in the end.

      In spite of everything that happened to me, I still believe this to be true.

      chapter 1

      You know, none of this ever would have happened, were it not for that Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times. After all, it’s not like grown women over the age of twenty think very much about Nancy Drew, is it? Besides which, as a young girl, I’d not been much of a Nancy Drew fan. Sure, I’d seen the shelves of her books in the libraries and bookstores I frequented whenever I got the chance, but she’d seemed so other-timely, outdated, so retro in a way that would never be fashionable again.

      At least that’s what I thought.

      Anyway, the article had one of those oblique angles, as these things so often do, but it was generally about Iraq and the Osama bin Laden Presidential Daily Briefings. The tie-in with Nancy Drew was that we really needed someone brash and intrepid like her involved, and questioned where all the brash and intrepid people had gone.

      As for me, at the age of twenty-three, I no longer felt brash and intrepid, since events had conspired to rob me of those feelings.