First, a confession: I turned my back on novel writing before I wrote
this book, convinced I’d never publish another novel again.
In the early 2000s, I was laid off as an editor at Reader’s Digest. At the time I was working on my first mystery
series about the FDNY, based on my husband’s work as a New York City
firefighter. I went on to publish three books in that series. Then my mom
suffered a series of strokes and died, my second child was born and my new
novel couldn’t find a publisher. I felt lost in every part of my being,
convinced that the only way to get ahead was to write, write, write.
I started on another novel. Half way through, I put it down. The
problem, I decided, was that I was writing because I wanted to publish again rather than because I thought
I had something to say. What I needed
was to step back, think about something that mattered to me and do it. If that
meant never publishing again, so be it.
I already had an idea what mattered to me. I also knew that it had
nothing to do with novel writing.
I live in northern Westchester County,
NY, a lush, wooded region about forty miles north of New York City. It’s an
area where great wealth and great need exist side by side. In the 1990s, Latin
Americans, many of them undocumented, began to settle in the area. They mowed
the lawns, cleaned the houses and bussed the restaurant tables of the more
affluent in the county. At the train station, I often saw them huddled on cold
winter mornings, rubbing their hands together to stay warm while they waited
for contractors to drive by and offer them work.
As the daughter of immigrants (my father was from Russia, my mother was
born and raised in England), I admired their grit and resilience. I knew from
watching my parents that it took a lot of guts to make it in a strange land.
There was one big difference however: my parents were able to acquire the legal
status that allowed them to work their way into the middle class, further their
educations and eventually own their own home. The people I saw would never get
that chance, no matter how hard they worked because of their undocumented
status.
I’m not political, but I felt moved by their situation. I began
volunteering at a local outreach center that provided English lessons and other
services to new immigrants. I got to know some of the people and began to hear
their heart-rending accounts of near-death journeys and tearful family
separations. The writer in me began to wonder: was there some way to share
their stories so that others in the community could be as inspired as I was by
them?
I contacted several local Hispanic organizations and suddenly found
myself talking to people who, in many cases, had never shared their stories
with anyone before. I interviewed almost twenty people—men and women of all
ages from countries throughout Latin America. I began the project in the hopes
that the people I interviewed would eventually be able to step out of the
shadows. But our immigration policies have shifted very little in the past two
decades. My subjects’ stories could not be told without exposing them to undue
risk. The project ground to a halt. Once again, I felt the sting of
disappointment and defeat.
Months went by and still I couldn’t get their stories out of my mind. These
people had risked so much to share them with me. I knew I had to find a way to
keep them alive. And suddenly, after saying I’d probably never write another
novel again, I knew I had to. It was the only way to tell their stories. I took
what I knew and loved about writing mysteries and married it to something I
cared about deeply. And Land of
Careful Shadows was born. I hope readers love the twists and turns that
come with every good mystery novel. But I hope too, that they come away with a
sense of the real people behind it.