Peering Through Life's Window

THINGS LEFT UNSPOKEN I've been asked a lot lately what inspired my new novel, Things Left Unspoken. It’s a natural question; people often assume that novels are a look into the writer’s real life. Typically, for me, that’s not true. But in this case, it’s partly true. When my great-uncle died, he left my great-aunt (they had no children) in the house she’d grown up in. She was unable to live alone so she came to live with my mother. My mother sold the house — now in a dying town — to a land developer who was going to restore not only the house, but the town. (It didn’t happen … ) Anyway, it snowed the day we buried Uncle Jimmy. Fleeting snow. Years later (about 10 years!) I was sitting on my back porch, rocking in one of the front porch rockers given to me from my great-grandparent’s estate. It was cold. February. Very gray. And I thought, “It snowed the day we buried Uncle Jimmy.”I knew immediately I had written the first line of a novel. So, I ran inside and typed one sentence, t...