Books are born in strange places.  This one was conceived in the front seat of a car. 

     No, not that kind of conception.  My friend Julianna was driving.  Our daughters were chatting in the back seat.  I was talking about an article I’d written for McCall’s about two young girls in Arizona whose parents had died within months of each other.  “Did you know that in some states, if there isn’t a will, the kids can be sent to foster care?”

     The girls in my story weren’t so unfortunate.  Their mother had named her best friends, another pair of sisters, as the children’s guardians.   ”Just make sure you chose someone to take over if something happens to you.”

     From there we talked about difficult it would be to chose which couple among one’s siblings and friends would best be suited for the job.  Where did one couple’s permissiveness slide into overindulgence, another’s consistency into unbearable strictness?  The idea of dying was hard enough, but figuring out which couple would most love your kids in your absence? Impossible.

     We paused in our conversation just long enough for my brain to settle on yet another catastrophic possibility.  “You know what would be worse?” I asked.  “What if I died and John (my husband) married someone awful?  I’d have no control at all!”

     Another pause.  “Unless,” I continued.  “I could get him to agree that if he remarried, my sisters and friends would check  out the bride.  Make sure she wasn’t some kind of wicked stepmother.”

     And thus was hatched the idea of EVERYONE SHE LOVED, a novel that explores the faith one woman placed in her dearest friends, the care she took to protect her family, and the many ways in which romantic entanglements will confound and confuse even the most determined of planners.

>>Read an article written for McCall's about motherless daughters (PDF)

Copyright © 2009 Sheila Curran. All rights reserved.