The 2020 Reads That Helped Us Through It All

It’s been a painful, deeply challenging and often heartbreaking year and thank goodness, there are just a few days left in it. While at times life became too overwhelming to make time for pleasure reading, when we needed them, the right books were always there. Here are some insights into what we each turned to for comfort, escapism, education, and entertainment. (And because she is a perpetual over-achiever, Molly’s is more of an essay!) Should you feel inspired to buy any of these titles for your own enjoyment, we hope you’ll shop at your local independent bookstore!

HANNAH: Right at the beginning of the pandemic – just before those heady days of hoarding toilet paper and yeastless baking aisles – I picked up a book that had been on my TBR list for a while: CONVENIENCE STORE WOMAN by Sayaka Murata. I love a literary weirdo and Keiko is a near-perfect literary weirdo; she’s an isolated 30-something whose entire identity is defined, willingly, by her occupation as a convenience store cashier. It’s a love story of sorts, between a woman and a store (there’s a human man thrown into the mix too but there’s little love there), and Murata brings an eye for detail and a deadpan wit that is irresistible. Then lockdown hit us. Nobody puts baby in the corner, not even the CDC. At least, that was what I muttered to myself as I scrolled for titles to offset my new and sudden domesticity. Sometime between the third and fourth focaccia Friday, I decided to read Leila Slimani’s SEX AND LIES: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World. While on a press tour in Morocco for her first novel, ADÈLE, Slimani gathered intimate testimonies from Arab woman about sex, love and relationships in a society that does its best to dictate what those acts should look like. It’s a deeply compassionate and beautifully written book that taught me a lot about a culture I thought I understood. If you liked Lisa Taddeo’s THREE WOMEN in theory but weren’t blown away by it in practice, you’ll enjoy SEX AND LIES. More recently, with the bitter weather creeping in, I turned my attention to dark, wintry fiction. I saw the cover of A CERTAIN HUNGER – a close up of Bernardino Mei’s Ghismonda holding the heart of her lover– and I was in. Chlesea G. Summers has written a Bacchanalian feast of a book; the narrator, Dorothy Daniels, is a libertine and a food critic, whose voice is somehow one part Raymond Chandler and one part Sex in the City’s Samantha Jones. Oh, and she’s also a serial killer. Summers interweaves the expected sinews of a gastronome’s dinner party conversation – the preferred terroir for white truffles, the allure of duck fat - with viscous descriptions of gore. It’s a confusing read in that respect, you’re hungry one moment and repulsed the next, but it’s not one you’ll forget any time soon.

LUCY: As so many people have already pointed out, this pandemic has left me constantly unsure of what day it is, what time it is, and even what season! Which is how I found myself reading a horror book in the sweaty final weeks of July (THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS) and a memoir titled HEAVY on a beach several weeks later. A part of me wishes I had saved THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS for spooky season, as it’s one of those books that deeply unsettles you (in a great way) and would have only been enhanced by the crunching of dead leaves and brisk winds. But I’d highly recommend it for any time of the year, as long as the reader is up for something both intimate and brutal—this one’s not for the faint of heart. The same would apply in a different sense to Kiese Laymon’s memoir HEAVY, which devastated me but was written with such beauty and warmth. I don’t know why, in a year with so many exciting new releases, I turned my attention to books that had been on my TBR pile for a few years, but in addition to finally reading HEAVY, I also dove into CIRCE by Madeline Miller. I hadn’t previously read her work, and wasn’t sure whether I’d enjoy reading literary fiction based heavily on mythology, but It. Completely. Swept. Me. Away. Miller’s descriptions are so vivid and lush that I stopped waiting for Odysseus to arrive on the scene and just surrendered to the novel as if I lived in its pages. These three books couldn’t be more different, but each of them was exactly what I needed in a specific moment of this pandemic rollercoaster.

HEATHER: This has been an interesting year for reading. I found myself skipping around much more than usual, picking up one title only to abandon it after a few chapters, then return to it two months later when it was exactly what I needed. I've always been a pretty voracious and open minded reader, but I was chasing a mood this year, wandering around my apartment for 20 minutes trying to pick the perfect book to read before bed. While I read it in doses, over several months, UNDERLAND by Robert Macfarlane transported me, and reading it felt like medicine. He allowed me to travel in a year of isolation, and his loving, precise descriptions of our transforming natural world were both transcendent and galvanizing. In a wildly different mood, Rumaan Alam's LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND was the perfect encapsulation of the shimmering dread I've been feeling all year. Alam's authorial control and the growing claustrophobia and panic had me turning pages compulsively. Along with supporting as many pandemic new releases as possible, I also shopped my own shelves. When I picked up Claire Lombardo's THE MOST FUN WE EVER HAD, I felt instantly swaddled with warmth and humor and a lovely autumnal mood. I have a large, complex family and Lombardo's care for her imperfect, lovable characters moved me in the best way.

MOLLY: What a great question, like “What did you read over your summer vacation?” except that it’s lasted nearly three seasons! I hate parting with books I’ve bought, read and loved hard so my stack is now alarmingly high.  I keep promising myself I’ll read more non-fiction so I intend to NEXT read Bonnie Tsui’s WHY WE SWIM because when I’m not reading, swimming is the closest I’ll ever get to meditating. Plus, I already love her author photo—she’s got swimmer’s arms and a huge wide smile.

But what I read and LOVED during this pandemic, well it was fiction, all fiction.  Right around June, in time for summer breezes, I discovered Amity Gaige’s novel, SEA WIFE. It’s structurally brilliant and just as emotionally astute on all levels, with all characters.  Superficially, it’s the story of an ailing marriage—husband wants to sail around the world with the wife and two quite young kids; she agrees, reluctantly.  Here’s a quote from Michael, the husband, on having kids, “But once we had two, it seemed like they were always toddling toward busy roads and otherwise tempting death.  When bored, they were like raccoons at night, just tipping shit over to see what would happen, playing in the ash can or putting pennies down the steering wheel column, it’s like they were hazing us.”  See what I mean?  Irresistible.  Here’s what weird about this novel: I wouldn’t ever go sailing on the open seas after reading this book but nearly everyone on whom I’ve coaxed this novel disagrees with me.  They’re all IN. 

The next novel which stunned me into rapt submission was Lydia Millet’s A CHILDREN’S BIBLE.  More water!  Only this time, it’s a terrible storm which soon collapses the bizarre ecosystem taking place amongst multiple families in a truly vast summer rental house.  Honestly, A CHILDREN’S BIBLE is so boldly ambitious, it’s about pretty much everything that matters, starting with our beautiful, imperiled, imperfect earth and the ongoing crisis between generations.  How will we all take care of one another and just when might we hope to begin doing so?  This novel left me trembling, Lydia Millet brought me to my knees.

Finally, out of the wet and into the remote forests of Poland, I came upon Olga Tokarczuk’s fabulous novel, DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD, a title I love but have mangled for many months now, right along with the challenges of how to pronounce her last name (sorry Olga, forgive me)!  This novel crept up on me, it’s filled with restrained surprises, elegant, muscular, unsentimental sentences, it’s great!  I sorted out the end only AT the very end because of my own prejudices. I won’t here say towards whom. 

As I sift through my memories of these novels, it occurs to me that they are all written by women.  They are all about different forms of female rage, disenfranchisement and injustice.  Not exactly Pandemic Lite, I agree, but there you have it!

Spring 2020: New Publications

We’re in the final week of May. In an industry where the currency is words, it’s been months of numbers. Birthdays: two. Banana breads baked: five. Zoom calls: lost track. Boil it down further and you’ll see that the minutiae of a day under a pandemic is kept by personal tallies. Hours of screen time. Trips to the snack drawer. Pages read. There are public tallies being kept too, numbers that bookend our days and dictate the months to come. The sum of their total? Incalculable.

As areas of the country return to some semblance of normalcy, we are asking ourselves how we, as an agency, measure our time spent in lockdown. We look to the numbers again and come up with three: three Friedrich Agency books have been published during the pandemic so far. Three books were brought into the world when a belly-laugh, edge-of-your-seat climax, or dose of joie de vivre could make all the difference.

#1 New York Times bestselling author, Terry Mcmillan returned this March with IT’S NOT ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE (Ballantine), a funny and perceptive novel about a woman starting her second act. On the eve of Loretha Curry’s sixty-eighth birthday, she is successful in all aspects of her life: in business, in friendship, and in love. She is not one of those women who thinks her best days are behind her—and she’s determined to prove that it’s not all downhill from here. But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha will have to summon all her strength, resourcefulness, and determination to keep on thriving. Terry’s baldly honest but hopeful novel is, as People Magazine aptly put it, “a balm for troubled times.”

A week before Terry’s release, Rachel Harrison’s THE RETURN hit the (virtual) shelves. Published on March 24th by Berkley, Harrison’s debut novel has been equal parts scaring and charming the bejesus out of readers. After a two-year disappearance and Elise’s insistence that she will return, Julie mysteriously surfaces with no memory of where she’s been or what happened to her. Along with their two close friends from college, the women decide to reunite at a remote inn. But the second Elise sees Julie, she knows something is wrong. And as the weekend unfurls, there is one question occupying the women: who—or what—is Julie? You’ll close the last page with an urge to sleep with the lights on but, to quote a recent New York Times review, you’ll also “wish you could stop the clock and replace what they’ve lost, because it is what we’ve all lost: time, with all its pleasure and pain, its many perfect moments and all the people who showed up and disappeared, never to return.”

Rufi Thorpe rounds off our trio with THE KNOCKOUT QUEEN. An LA Times and Oklahoma bestseller, Book of the Month pick, and IndieNext pick for May, Rufi’s fearless novel was published on April 28th by Knopf to rave reviews. “Full of verve and sketched in colors as vibrant as a Tilt-A-Whirl David Hockney landscape” (La Times), THE KNOCKOUT QUEEN takes us to the Californian suburbs, where Bunny Lampert ⁠—beautiful, tall, blond, and wealthy—and Michael⁠⁠—with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing⁠—form an unlikely friendship. Navigating the pitfalls of being “other” (Bunny is six foot three and towering over everyone, while Michael pretends to be straight at school but meets up with men from Grindr at night), their lives are irreversibly changed by a split-second moment of violence.

So, how do you measure a book? Its total is not the aggregate of its pages, the years spent writing, or the sales it brings in. A good book is like a wade through a pond: when you’re in it, you feel it – wet to your knees, a burn in your thighs from the slog through the silt, a humming anxiety about what you might step on – and, then you’re out, you’re finished, months have passed, you pull out your boots for a rainy April day and there, on the left sole, is a cubic inch of dried pond clay. A good book has you in the moment, it offers whatever it is you need at that time. But a good book will also come to you later, again, sometimes when you least expect it.

When we are reminded of these difficult months, I’m hopeful that for every moment of frustration we think back on, it is twinned with a line of perfect cadence or a scene that made us snortlaugh onto the page. There will be tallies we forget (cookies consumed or episodes binged) but good books are notches made to last.

— Hannah Brattesani

2020: The Year so Far

As we watch April and its oblivious blossoms approach from our windows, there’s perhaps no better metaphor for the past couple of months at the agency than the stubborn arrival of Spring. A lot has happened since the beginning of 2020 and much like that Neruda staple - “You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming” – great literature persists.

Molly and Lucy started the year off with Jackie Polzin’s BROOD. Sold to Doubleday (Random House) at the first US auction of 2020, Polzin’s debut novel was then quickly snapped up at UK auction by Picador and, more recently, sold at auction in Germany to DTV with Italian rights acquired shortly after by Stile Libero with a pre-emptive offer.

For readers of Jenny Offill and Rachel Cusk, BROOD follows an unnamed narrator’s stubborn attempt to keep her small brood of four chickens alive and safe over the course of one savage winter in Minnesota. Woefully unprepared for the task, she battles the relentless predators, severe weather and unforeseen bad luck—all the while grieving a recent miscarriage, and coming to terms with her infertility and the accompanying uncertainty that her future holds.

Not long after, Heather and Molly closed another debut novel auction, this time with Dutton (Penguin). BEE MUSIC by Eileen Garvin tells the tale of three lonely residents of a rural Oregon town, each struggling to deal with one of life's curveballs—a teenager who has just become paraplegic after a freak accident, a middle-aged widow suffering from panic attacks, and a young man with severe social anxiety—who come together on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing, and maybe even a second chance, just when they least expect it.

BEE MUSIC instantly charmed the international market; Harper Collins will publish Eileen`s debut in Holland, Headline in the UK, LeYas in Brazil, and after almost a month-long auction German rights were acquired by Piper.

Hannah soon followed with her first domestic deal at The Friedrich Agency. Sold at auction to Penguin Workshop, RESPECTING THE MIC is an anthology of poetry from alumni and current students of the longest running spoken word club of its kind, edited by New York Times bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, Peter Kahn and Dan "Sully" Sullivan. The anthology features new work from NBA basketball star Iman Shumpert, HBO's Insecure's Langston Kerman, Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson among others. RESPECTING THE MIC also tells the story of how a single club, born out of a Chicago classroom over two decades ago, has changed the trajectory of thousands of children`s lives. As New York Times poetry editor Naomi Shihab Nye wrote of the anthology: "If anyone needs to be convinced that poetry matters - makes us bigger and wider and calmer and more confident - look here."

Bringing new voices to readers is a gift and as we continue to work away from one another, having left our four person hive in Flatiron for our scattered coops (sorry, couldn’t resist), we are grateful to have new and established authors to champion. Whatever tempests come our way it is the buoying reassurance of books that keep us afloat.

— Hannah Brattesani

2019: A Year in Review!

It’s been a rollercoaster of a year, both culturally and politically, but we’re grateful to look back at both the books our authors have released this year as well as the new deals that have promised great and important things yet to come to bookshelves! But first: we need to give a proper welcome to Hannah Brattesani, our new Foreign Rights Director here at The Friedrich Agency, who is also building her list as an agent! Hannah joined the agency just after the Thanksgiving break, having previously worked for Emma Sweeney Agency as well as Folio Literary Management. It’s an honor to have her on The Friedrich Agency team!

Following its release this past October, OLIVE, AGAIN by Elizabeth Strout has enjoyed over two months on the New York Times Bestseller list, and was announced on CBS The Morning as the next pick for Oprah’s Book Club! If you’ve been wanting to pick up a copy, but haven’t yet read OLIVE KITTERIDGE, rest assured that “like its iconic heroine, this book is capable of standing alone” as Elizabeth Egan put it in her New York Times Book Review. And for Strout fans who are within an easy commute of New York City, tickets are now on sale for the Broadway adaptation of MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, a one-woman show starring the magnificent Laura Linney, which opens on January 15th at MTC.

In exciting book deal news, Heather & Molly closed an auction with Grand Central (Hachette) for Bill Alexander’s next book: TEN TOMATOES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD! With the wit and humor of Bill Bryson and the cultural insight of Mark Kurlansky, the book will be a narrative history of the tomato, from its 300-year stint as an ornamental plant in Italy to six dollar per pound heirlooms.

And if you’re a word-obsessed reader like we are, do check out Cathleen Schine’s latest novel, THE GRAMMARIANS! The story follows identical twin sisters who share a fierce passion for words and the English language, but as adults, find themselves locked in a vicious feud about whether or not language is an evolving construct or fixed set of rules. THE GRAMMARIANS got a rave review on the cover of NYTBR, and has popped up on numerous “Best of 2019” lists, including the 100 Notable Books, as well as Kirkus and Buzzfeed.

Looking ahead to 2020, one of our most anticipated releases is BECOMING DUCHESS GOLDBLATT, the Anonymous memoir by the author behind the beloved Twitter account. Following the deal announcement of Lucy’s sale to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Kirkus ran a feature on the intrigue surrounding this forthcoming publication, and it has already landed on the Real Simple list of books to watch for in 2020. While you won’t learn the author’s name, this inventive and heartbreaking book will be unlike any memoir you’ve ever come across—look for it in July, or pre-order it and receive a unique bookplate signed by Her Grace.

Also on deck for 2020: A new novel by the great Terry McMillan titled IT’S NOT ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE, is coming in March! Another March title is the terrifying debut horror novel by Rachel Harrison (currently in development for TV) titled THE RETURN. And in April, a third novel by Rufi Thorpe (whom Kevin Wilson has called “an unbelievably unique talent”), titled THE KNOCKOUT QUEEN! Then in August, published on the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Lesley M.M. Blume’s meticulously researched and urgently important FALLOUT will release in hardcover from S&S.

Now in paperback: two memoirs by intelligent, powerful women whom we deeply admire. Sally Field’s exquisite debut, IN PIECES, and Glynnis MacNicol’s ground-breaking NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS are both freshly available in paperback format. If you missed them in hardcover, now is the time to grab yourself a copy!

Wishing everyone a joyous holiday break, with plenty of stolen moments for delving into the books that have been piling up, awaiting your attention and promising access to new worlds and fresh ideas. Onward to 2020!

Fall Recap - Best of the Year feat: Glynnis MacNicol!

As many of us prepare to spend significant family time together in the coming weeks, it feels like a particularly good moment to explore nontraditional narratives and remember (or to remind fellow family members) that taking a different path shouldn’t be met with assumptions and unwanted advice. Whether you’re single, married, or divorced, Glynnis MacNicol’s memoir of her own adventures navigating these choices will move you deeply, make you think and ignite an important conversation. NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS was published by Simon & Schuster this summer, is getting shout outs left and right, so we’ve gathered a few here for your reading pleasure.

Esquire named NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS one of the 40 Best Nonfiction titles of 2018, citing it as creating “a new version of the feminine standard.” Her memoir is one of CBC’s selections for best Canadian Nonfiction, and a Financial Times Best Book of 2018.

And in this fascinating Atlantic piece on the film Mary Queen of Scots, “Hollywood Still Doesn’t Know What to Make of Childless Women,” Megan Garber writes about a few surprisingly skeptical responses to Glynnis’ work, emphasizing the necessity of her book. She quotes MacNicol, who says: “We don’t understand how to talk about women’s lives as fulfilling unless we incorporate babies or weddings. [There are] no stories about women over the age of 40, really, where they aren’t primarily accessories in their own lives or support systems.”

So if you’ve got a favorite single lady on your list, or just a bad-ass woman looking for a good read, this book is for them.

Fall Recap - Sarah Sentilles wins the 2018 PEN Award for Creative Nonfiction!

On November 2nd, Sarah Sentilles was awarded the 2018 PEN America Award for Creative Nonfiction for her brilliant book DRAW YOUR WEAPONS. This year’s Litfest Gala was held at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles to honor “those who embody PEN America’s mission to celebrate, champion, and defend freedom of expression.” And on that note, we’d like to share an excerpt from Sarah’s exceptionally moving acceptance remarks:

“The world is on fire, and the flames of racism and sexism and fascism and environmental destruction and war are signaling us: it’s time to make more art. And by “art” I mean paintings and I mean poems and I mean gardens and songs and sculptures.

When I say out loud that making art is the most urgent thing we can do right now, people say, “You can’t be serious.” But I am serious. Art gives me hope, and this hope is not naïve. It’s not romantic or small or abstract. It’s concrete: glue and paint, scissors and tape, words and drawings, book pages and ink and gouache and oil and canvas and sentence after sentence after sentence. It’s the certain knowledge that it’s possible to make something new.

My training as a theologian and an activist and a feminist has taught me it’s possible to imagine a world other than the version peddled to you by people in power. And my training as an artist has taught me it’s possible to make that world. For I can see it; it’s just and it’s beautiful and it’s life-giving for the most vulnerable and precarious among us, for those who have been shut out and shut up and not believed, for the un-grieved and the untended, for the trees and the beasts and the winged ones and the rivers and the mountains, for the missing and the terrified and the suffering.

The world is made, and it can be unmade and remade. We are all artists here and the muscles of our visionary minds are growing stronger and stronger. With every word, every piece of clay, every brushstroke, every stitch, we create that imagined world – and we choose to live there now.

Can you feel it spinning into being? Can you hear its song? Will you answer its call?”

Fall Recap - The novel worth a ten-year wait

This October, Leif Enger gave us the best fall gift of all - his first novel in ten years! VIRGIL WANDER is a sweeping, heartfelt tale set in the upper Midwest, with a vibrant cast of characters that will capture your heart as soon as you turn the first page. Tana French picked Leif’s novel as one of her most anticipated books of 2018 in Vulture, saying: “[Enger’s] writing leaped out at me—it’s so easy and so vivid and so powerful all at once, and his characters are instantly real.”

But, as usual, don’t just take our word (or Tana French’s) for it! VIRGIL WANDER was the #1 Indie Next Pick for October, a Library Reads Pick, a Barnes & Noble Pick of the Month, a Library Journal Best Book of 2018 and an Amazon Best Book of the Year. It has also been longlisted for the 2019 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.

“Enger’s first novel in 10 years marks him as a foremost stylist. His prose is rhapsodic, kaleidoscopic and — I’ll say it — enviable. Even more enviable is the rare feat of writing a comedic literary novel that is also a page-turner...Enger deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Richard Russo and Thomas McGuane. VIRGIL WANDER is a lush crowd-pleaser about meaning and second chances and magic. And in these Trumpian times, isn’t that just the kind of book and protagonist we’re all searching for?”

— New York Times Book Review

Indeed it is, we agree! Read the full NYT review here, then run and buy a copy for the dreamers left on your holiday gift list.

Fall Recap - Laurie Frankel Takes the World by Storm

Here at The Friedrich Agency we’ve had a busy fall! Over the next three weeks, we’ll be posting a recap series with some of the season’s highlights. If you don’t have a book in mind for everyone on your holiday gift list after we’re done with you – well, we can’t say we didn’t try! So stay tuned and check back here for more info in the coming weeks!

In January of 2017, Laurie Frankel’s masterful novel THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS was published by Flatiron Books. A novel about a family whose youngest boy of five wants to be a girl when he grows up, Laurie’s book was a 2017 Best-of-the-Year favorite across platforms, but sometimes it still take a little longer for the rest of the world to catch up…

And who better to help us spread the word than our book champion herself, Reese Witherspoon! This October, Reese selected THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS as her official book club selection, introducing the power of Poppy to a whole new set of readers.

Y’all. @RWitherspoon’s October pick for #ReesesBookClub is HERE! #ThisIsHowItAlwaysIs by @Laurie_Frankel is a story about family, parenthood, and the love, heartache, and hope that comes with it. Can’t wait to hear what you think! https://t.co/A0ktYtRjwE pic.twitter.com/ulILwylCiI

— Hello Sunshine (@hellosunshine) October 4, 2018

To add to her accolades, Laurie became an NYT bestseller, a winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award, and she’s long-listed for the International Dublin Literary Award.

As you can see, you don’t have to take OUR word for it that this book is worth reading! Just take Reese’s, the NYT’s, various literary committees’…. you get the point.

We’ll leave you with this powerful image made by the brilliant team at Flatiron, which encapsulates just how important Laurie Frankel’s novel is in our uncertain times.

Remembering Sue Grafton

It’s August, 2018 and, aside from what feels like truly endless rain, it’s also Sue Grafton’s paperback publication month for her last novel, Y IS FOR YESTERDAY.  In honor of that, I thought I’d share the words I wrote in honor of Sue’s memorial service at The New York Public Library, back in April.  It’s certainly not perfect but it was written directly from the heart. We all miss her so dearly.

"Hi. My name is Molly Friedrich and I was Sue’s literary agent for thirty-five years, since B Is For Burglar first made its way across my desk.

I didn’t actually meet Sue until a couple of letters deeper into the alphabet. She didn’t come to New York very often and I’ve never been much of a traveling agent, leaping onto planes for any of those key moments in a writer’s life. 

There probably isn’t anyone in this room who didn’t adore Sue Grafton or, at the very least, admire her. In a writing world painfully thick with competition, I don’t think Sue had a single literary foe. As Sue and I rode that ferocious wave from truly modest success to so-called mega-success, I don’t think Sue ever once reproached or berated or scolded me for any decision I ever made on her behalf. 

Can you try for a moment, to even imagine that? And, as they say of the architect, if you want to see her monument, look around you—at her husband, at her children, at her many readers, at all her publishing family…

Two things always happen when people learn that I represent Sue Grafton. The population of agents and writers longs to learn just how Sue became “Sue Grafton.” And I know the answer, of course I do! But agents don’t need to reveal all the secrets in their arsenal, so I’m not telling you.

The second thing that happens when the rest of the reading world learns that I am Sue’s agent is actually slightly maddening. The fan suddenly feels morally obligated to offer an opinion on nearly every single letter. It often goes something like this, “Well, I just loved S!  I mean, that is my all-time favorite-- well, my other favorite is N, you know, for noose? But T? What’s going on, is Sue okay?” I usually smile politely, having learned long ago that it’s not becoming or helpful to yell at people who don’t love every book I send out into the world.  I point out diplomatically that, like best friends, you cannot have more than one favorite, that what matters is that they keep going with the alphabet, that their loyalty will nearly always be well rewarded.

Back in those single-engine days—the days of Selectric typewriters and carbon paper—we both worked really hard, building and nurturing an audience for Kinsey. I’ve sifted through my ancient files and discovered many enraged letters written by me and sent to various people at Holt, Sue’s first publisher. There is a certain, consistent sameness to these letters: if you scream politely, eloquently, you will eventually be heard! By the time “G” is for Gumshoe marched onto the New York Times Bestseller list, I’d learned a good deal about Sue Grafton:

Here was a woman with no use for sentimentality, a writer for whom ethics, principles and integrity were not the hypocrisy of our politicians but simply matters of hard fact. No clutter. No glibness. No complacency. And hard work. Even as late into the alphabet as “W”, the work stayed hard—Sue never phoned it in. Never. In fact, I found a note from Sue in which she cheerfully announced that she had amassed 605 pages of single-spaced notes for W and was finally moving in a straight line…

There came a time, probably around “P” is for Peril, when my deeply middle class, Judeo-Christian bones kicked in and I decided I was making too much money from Sue’s success.  I don’t want to be falsely modest here but I began nursing febrile, dark, 4:00 am thoughts that Sue might hire a lawyer and just be done with me.  So I called her up and began ranting and raving,

“There’s nothing for me to DO for you!” I complained. “You’re never any trouble! Don’t you have any anthology deals going awry? Or some permissions snafu that needs my attention?”

Sue just laughed that effervescent, tingly laugh of hers and said, “No, Ma’am.” I finally said, in utter exasperation, “Well, can’t you at least send me your ironing?”  She laughed again, and said, “Oh, honey. Just enjoy it. Call it back pay.”

And so, I did. But I want to return here to the subject of ironing. 

When I heard from Steve last Spring, that Sue’s operation had yielded only bad news, I was suddenly desperate to see her, to get on a plane and visit her. It was finally arranged that Lucy and I might visit between chemo sessions, the last week of July.  Ever the vainglorious Leo, I declared, “Oh, that’s perfect! July 31st is my 65th birthday!”  Sue’s response to this was distinctly Southern: if there’s a birthday, then of course, there must be a cake! I protested, but Sue remained firm.

Lucy and I spent a deeply charmed evening with Sue and Steve, begging for a detailed house tour. Two features fired Sue’s enthusiasm. One was a fake dresser. It looked exactly like a traditional, three-drawer wooden dresser but cut discreetly into its side was a kitty cat door, housing a food and drink station and a litter box. No noise, no noxious smells, no spraying litter all over the floor. Sue had designed it herself and was rightly proud of its elegant functionality. 

The second feature Sue adored in the house was an old fashioned iron, actually called a “mangle”. It was a large ironing steam press, with multiple fabric settings and Sue loved showing it off, like a vast, domestic fantasy.

 So now you know why Sue never sent me her ironing: she was having way too much fun doing it herself. 

When I visited Sue late last July, she seemed shockingly thin, needing to nap but otherwise fully present.  I had assumed my birthday cake would be made by Liz Gastiger, their long-term chef and friend. But no, Sue had made my cake herself: a perfect lemon genoise with buttercream frosting.  As I tucked into my second piece, I exclaimed, “Sue this cake is a LONG way from Duncan Hines, whose recipe is it?” 

“Rose Levy Berenbaum,” she told me. 

I nearly choked, “But Berenbaum is impossible, she’s so exacting, she’s an absolute tyrant of precision!” 

I don’t know. There’s something so deeply moving about this beloved writer, not an ounce over ninety pounds, baking me a sublime birthday cake.  The next morning, before I drove to the airport, I had a third slice for breakfast.

Respectfully submitted, indeed." 

Welcome to the world, FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE!

At long last, the buzzed-about debut from Ingrid Rojas Contreras, FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE, is here! Based on her own experience as a child, the novel is set against the backdrop of the devastating violence of 1990's Colombia, following  a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both. Her brilliant novel is staggering (it made a New York Times reviewer "wince in recognition") and has been praised as "one of the most dazzling and devastating novels" with "images that blister and burn, phrases that adorn and astonish." (San Francisco Chronicle) 

We guarantee that as soon as you finish, you'll want more, so check out Q&As with Ingrid on Goodreads and Shondaland.