For encouraging me to write this when I kept saying I probably shouldn’t, and/or for reading early drafts: Brigid Kemmerer (who is the best critique partner), Jojo Moyes, Reba Gordon, Katie Desmond, Jane Picoult, Elyssa Samsel.
Now on to the MVPs of publishing. Creating a book takes a long time. It’s not just the writing, it’s the editing and copyediting and design and marketing and placement and all the other things that have to happen so you can read it. One day in March I showed up in my editor’s inbox with an email that said, Surprise, here’s a book I never planned to write! Jennifer Hershey, who is the world’s most brilliant editor and fiercest cheerleader, reacted in the best possible way: she loved the book, and she wanted to publish it while we were all still trying to wrap our heads around this past year. My agent/friend/partner-in-crime, Laura Gross, was equally instrumental in achieving this Herculean feat. My publicist, Susan Corcoran, has the biggest heart and the sharpest mind and I would not do any of this without her by my side. And then there is the rest of the well-oiled Ballantine machine, which made this publication possible in record time: Gina Centrello, Kara Walsh, Kim Hovey, Deb Aroff, Rachel Kind, Denise Cronin, Scott Shannon, Matthew Schwartz, Theresa Zoro, Kelly Chian, Paolo Pepe, Erin Kane, Kathleen Quinlan, Corina Diez, Emily Isayeff, Maya Franson, Angie Campusano. You are my army, and that makes me feel invincible.
Endless thanks to the family that kept me sane when I was crawling the walls this past year: Kyle and Kevin Ferreira van Leer, who did the New York Times crossword and Spelling Bee with me daily; and Four Square Team Extraordinaire Sammy and Frankie Ramos, Jake van Leer and Melanie Borinstein.
Finally, thanks to the only guy I’d want to be stuck in an enclosed space with for over 365 days: Tim van Leer. Even though you edited my grocery lists to make them healthier, I will love you forever, no matter what world we’re in.
Turn the page for an exclusive short story …
Broken Things
Jodi Picoult
When I was a kid, it seemed to me that everyone knew my mother better than I did.
That’s a Hannah O’Toole, people would say, pointing at one of her famous photographs, reprinted in a book or framed on a museum wall.
On television, in a Jeopardy! clue: This American is the only woman to win both an International Photography Award and a Pulitzer.
Who is Hannah O’Toole?, Alex.
My mother was an icon, a legend who used her visual arts skills to document catastrophes and suffering so that those who saw her pictures from their safe, first-world homes could find the empathy (and cash) to mend the other parts of the world. She was most often described as if her Leica was a natural extension of her body, an adaptation to a limb that somehow gave her the superpowers of insight and recording. What people didn’t see was what happened when she put that camera down. Without that prosthetic, she faltered.
My father was a conservator, an artist who colored within someone else’s lines. Unlike my mother, who created art, he claimed he didn’t have the eye to tell his own story. Instead, he meticulously painted over chipped plaster on the frescoed ceilings of Newport mansions; he used Japanese tissue and wheat starch paste to mend tears in watercolor paper; he repaired water damage and smoke damage and insect damage to the canvases of Old Masters. His jobs lasted from months to years, depending on who was hiring him and how deep the wounds he was repairing. He was also the one who patched together the ceramic pig I made at summer camp when it fell off my dresser; who could stitch an invisible seam when my favorite dress got caught on a fence and tore; who could rewire the old Tinker Bell lamp we found at a thrift store so that it worked again. He could fix anything that was broken.
Except, maybe, my mother.
In April 2000, just before I was about to turn ten years old, my mother was headed off on assignment, shooting pictures of a nine-month drought in Ochelata, Oklahoma, to accompany a Washington Post feature on climate change. She had been away for more of my birthdays than she had been present. In fact, I probably would have been surprised had she rearranged her work schedule to be home in New York City with us.