To my last-born child, Willy Bethel, who looked out over the sea of parents one June day, eighteen months ago, as he delivered his graduation address, to find my face in the crowd, face me squarely, and say, “Now, Mom, go write your novel,” goes the word that I take what he says seriously and always will. Fierce love and nothing but.
To Ken Munn, builder of the finest cabinets found in British Columbia, goes love as straight and true as old-growth timber.
And finally, my thanks to a precious young reader who wrote to me, from her tiny village in the northernmost part of Israel last spring, to tell me she had read and cared about my work, and—most important—that it made her feel less alone in a violent and uncertain world. Shani spoke, in her letter, of her love of Anne Frank, her dream of becoming a writer, and her hope that one day she might tell stories other girls would read, as she read mine. It is for a reader like Shani Boianjiu that I write.
The Usual Rules Page 40
