“As we know from the study of Goldilocks, fiction carries the deepest truths.”
I published my first novel twenty-five years ago. It was not a masterpiece, but to me it was a miracle. Unboxing was still a private phenomenon back then and I remember looking at the book in disbelief. There it was in the box, and I found I didn’t care much about how it would be received. The fact that I wrote it and that it made it into the world with a real ISBN was the focus of my celebration. It existed!Article continues after advertisement
I gave my mom the first copy of my book. My mom had dreamed of becoming a painter. She had a teacher who supported her. He believed she had talent. But her lower middle-class rural background and gender made it hard in the early 1950s. Still, she wanted to provide for herself, so she fought to get an education, any kind would do, and she became a hairdresser. I’m her third child and the only girl. The story goes that I was born in the middle of a perm and the customer, with her curlers and all, was still sitting in her chair when I was delivered in the bedroom next door.
When I turned eight, my mom went back to school to become an art teacher. The dream caught up with her. Not in the original form, but still. It was as monumental as unboxing my debut back in 2001.
