"My students and their fictitious doubles," in the Penn Gazette (One Thing Stolen)

Thank you, Trey Popp, for sharing this story about my students and the characters they inspire in the new as-ever-gorgeous edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

The focus of this particular essay is One Thing Stolen, a novel Chronicle Books released this past April. One Thing Stolen  takes place partly on the Penn campus and partly in Florence, Italy. Its  primary characters—Maggie Ercolani and Katie Goldrath—were named for students I loved (and love).

Meanwhile, in a forthcoming novel, This Is the Story of You, my Mira Banul, the star of that story, carries the last name of my student Sean Banul. Mira must be especially strong as a monster storm devastates her world. She has a cat that waves. Sean gave me both strength and a waving cat. He gave me willing use of his last name.

Some people wonder why I write so many books. The answer: Because so many people and places inspire me. Indeed, my most recent students are already transforming the landscape of my imagination.

An excerpt from the Gazette story is below. The entire piece can be read here.

To be a Penn student is a privilege, absolutely, but privilege isn’t necessarily or even primarily the natural domain of the young people I meet. They are emergent, they are bright, they are headed toward something, but few among them have had it easy. The students who gather around the table in that Victorian twin have lost siblings, parents, teachers, best friends, faith in the bedrock, parts of themselves. They have been diagnosed, they have been uprooted, they have stood in danger’s way, they have endured violence and prejudice. They are, at times, the first members of their family to matriculate in college. English is not always their first language. Home is a word they are still defining. I say that I teach at Penn, but that is a preposterous shorthand. I show up, and I’m profoundly educated.

I am inspired.

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One Thing Stolen in a storefront in Florence, Italy, where it all began

A happy sight this morning—an image of One Thing Stolen in the window of Paperback Exchange, the Anglo-American bookstore in Florence, Italy, where some of the original research for this book took place in the form of interviews with the shop's owners, Maurizio Panichi and Emily Rosner. 

I had gone to the shop in October 2012 in order to write a story titled "Florence's Timeless Bookstore for Expats and Travelers" (Publishing Perspectives). I soon found myself engaged in a conversation about the 1966 flooding of the Arno and the work of the Mud Angels, for Maurizio had played an important role during that terrifying time. Soon thereafter Emily and I became friends. Emily answered questions about Italian and about history as I worked through many drafts. She told me tales about her life. And she was one of the very first readers of this book, sending me a series of encouraging notes while I was traveling by train—just when I needed them most.

Today Emily posted this picture on Facebook. I'm stealing it for my blog, in Nadia fashion.

Thank you, Emily. For all of it.

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The Mud Angels of One Thing Stolen

A long time ago, when I began to write the book that became One Thing Stolen, I thought of it as a book called Mud Angels. Perhaps because it is the story of a rescue—of more than one rescue. Perhaps because parts of the tale take place against the backdrop of the November 1966 flood that destroyed so much of Florence.

Today, when there is so much rain where I live, when my own car nearly slid into a stone wall earlier this morning, I share a few minutes of the Florence flood and of those mud angels who inspired my work on One Thing Stolen. This is an unusual, hybrid video that tells the important story.

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That Florence, Italy, novel: the title, the synopsis

Next spring, Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books will be releasing a novel set in Florence, Italy, and (to a lesser extent) West Philadelphia. It took me a long time, and many drafts, to get it right, and it is only recently that we have settled on a final title.

I share that here, with an early book description:

Something is just not right with Nadia Cara. She’s become a thief, for one thing. She has secrets she can’t tell. She knows what she thinks, but when she tries to speak, the words seem far away. Now in Florence, Italy, with a Master Chef wanna-be brother, a professor father, and a mother who specializes in at-risk teens, Nadia finds herself trapped by her own obsessions and following the trail of an elusive Italian boy—a flower thief—whom no one else has ever seen.  While her father tries to write the definitive history of the 1966 flood that threatened to destroy Florence, Nadia wonders if she herself will disappear—or if she can be rescued, too.

Set against the backdrop of a glimmering city, ONE THING STOLEN is an exploration of obsession, art, and a rare neurological disorder. It is a story about the ferocious, gorgeous madness of rivers and birds. It is about surviving in a place that, fifty years ago, was rescued by uncommon heroes known as Mud Angels. It is about art and language, imagining and knowing, and the deep salvation of love written by an author who is herself obsessed with the beguiling and slippery seduction of both wings and words.  

My students Katie Goldrath, Maggie Ercolani, and Stephanie Cara inspired me as I wrote. Emily Sue Rosner and Mario Sulit helped me get the Italian right. Alyson Hagy, Amy Sarig King, and Kelly Simmons kept me going. Patty McCormick and Ruta Sepetys listened. Lori Waselchuk gave me her West Philadelphia. Wendy Robards gave so much of her time and heart during desperate days. And Tamra Tuller stood by.

Always grateful.

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Mud Angels, the Florence novel, is copy-editing bound

Sometimes the books come easy. Sometimes the books come hard. It is necessary, in the end, to believe in them.

After 18 months of work on a novel called Mud Angels, I believe. I'm one final read away from relinquishing the book to copy editing. Tamra Tuller, my Chronicle Books editor, had to read this book many times. She had to find ways to tell me to return to the pages, had to wait, had to (I'm sure) hold her breath.

We're breathing now, both of us. Nadia Cara, my heroine, is finally fully alive and real. Her story—of battling a rare neurological disorder while living in a borrowed apartment off of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy—echoes through time, as stories must. Her secrets are rooted.

We don't give up because we can't give up. Because if we do, we will not learn all the lessons challenges set down for us. We will not know if we are big enough. We will not know if we are patient enough. We will not know what might have been. I learned the importance of persevering, again, with Mud Angels.

Chronicle Books will be releasing this novel in the spring of 2015.

I'm about to begin the writing of something new.

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