Читать книгу Back Against The Wall - Janice Kay Johnson - Страница 4

Dear Reader,

Writing a novel has a lot in common with putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Bits and pieces that have been floating unconnected in my brain suddenly fit. That’s never been truer than for this book.

I read a long time ago about a man who just wanted the neighbors to leave him alone, so they did. Years passed, and vines grew over the house. I suppose the neighbors assumed he’d moved. Eventually a kid decided to sneak into the house...and found the man, whose remains had mummified, sitting in his chair watching a TV that had presumably died many years before. Bet that poor kid never got over it!

I write often about family ties, and have pondered the difference between the increasingly modern American family, with kids who have moved far away from parents and see them only occasionally, and the extended families once more common, where lives are tangled, sometimes annoyingly, but no one in need goes without help. In this story, both hero and heroine are part of the second kind, for completely different reasons. Both love the closeness even as they chafe at the demands of their families.

Add in another theme that has always drawn me: what happens to the family and friends left behind when someone vanishes. The effect is more profound than if that same person had died, allowing everyone to grieve. What’s left behind instead is anger, grief, of course, fear and a lot of questions.

I had a moment of complete satisfaction when these and other pieces clicked together in my head and, hallelujah, there it was: a story.

Good reading,

Janice