We’d just finished delivering our youngest child to begin his first year at Amherst College. Save the forgotten pillow and the quick trip into the mall in Hadley (to say nothing of the 90+ degree heat) it had been an easy, almost seamless transition. We were feeling great about the journey our son was beginning. We got into the car and started up Main Street in Amherst to get back on Route 202 and start our own journey home. As we passed The Homestead, Emily’s house, the light turned red. I quickly checked email on my phone. And there, amazingly, was a note from the wonderful editorial assistant with whom I’ve worked at Norton: “Hi Julie, Finished copies of AFTER EMILY landed in our offices this morning – they look stunning! Congratulations on this beautiful book.”

The symmetry and symbolism bowled me over. “How is this possible?” I asked my husband. “We are LITERALLY in front of Emily’s house!” He turned from the steering wheel to face The Homestead and shouted, “The book is done!”

It felt like one of those precious, miraculous moments of convergence. A moment that you just can’t really explain.

I’ve certainly had a few of these moments over the past few years as I worked on this book. I’ve had times I could swear I heard Mabel or Millicent whispering in my ear. I’ve had flashes of insight into these women that have made feel like I was inside their heads, articulating things that perhaps they thought but never dared commit to paper. I’ve walked in houses they walked in and felt echoes of past footsteps on dark wooden stairs. I got up early one morning on Hog Island, saw the light on the bay and smelled the salt on my skin; a centering sense of calm came over me and I knew for certain why it was the Todd family felt that this was one of the most special places on earth.

And now this. It seemed like such an amazing sense of bookending a book. The process which in some ways started right there in Amherst so many years ago, would in one sense be completed in the very same place.

Of course the original title of my book was Outside Emily’s Door. Here I was, outside Emily’s door, maybe 50 yards away from it, and I found out that the completed copies of my book were delivered to W.W. Norton. It will soon come to me, and then, on October 30th, to you.