Being a writer had been far from my expectations;
being crowned a best-selling author was almost unimaginable. How had it happened? I often found myself thinking about it, marveling at the inconsistency of my success and earlier failure. My thoughts always came back to the nucleus at the center of it all, that letter to The New York Times. The clearest explanation is that I had found a subject I felt so strongly about that the writing was a natural consequence of that passion. I felt the same kind of passion when I began writing about firefighters and, later, a serial story about my mother. Whatever the subjects, they are always meaningful and timely because they represent the great values of human life - decency, honesty and fairness - subjects that burn within me as I write. Over the years, all five of my children have come to me periodically with one dilemma or another.