Pages for Her

by Sylvia Brownrigg

  She did not leave the crowd laughing. She read the just-finished passages aloud for her allotted half hour (a little less, to be modest), and left the audience serious and alert, themselves a little ravenous, wanting more. The people who listened to Flannery, mindful of their own griefs as she read, wanted to know from her story — this is what people come to fiction for, after all — what to expect from their own lives. How would it work out? Where would they find comfort? When would they recover?

  Flannery knew when she looked up afterwards, coming back into the world around her again from her dream, that this was where she would live for the next while, in her imagination. That landscape, that voice. Those people. That book.

  She would go back home to California and write it.

  Acknowledgments

  I was younger then.

  I am lucky in my friends. They’re brilliant.

  I’m grateful to my wonderful family.

  I miss the people I’ve lost.

  My agent and editor have shown great faith in this story, and with their astute readings and suggestions have helped me make it a better book.

  The faults are mine.

  My kids give me heart. Also, they laugh — if not necessarily at my jokes, at other people’s jokes, and that keeps everything going.

  Love is the best thing.

  Thanks.