“The writing of this book and all the others, my brilliant daughters, my brilliant life here… are all thanks to Wendy. Would you mind standing up please, my darling?”

Whistles and applause. Wendy half stood, waved modestly, and sat down again.

He paused. Whenever he tried to explain to anyone why’d he’d written Gold, how the idea of teenagers stuck on Mars had come to him, he drew a blank.

“When I lived in England, I wrote about America. When I moved here, rather logically, I found myself writing about Mars.”

Encouraging titters of laughter.

“Someone asked me if this was a young-adult book. Someone else asked if it was dystopian. Honestly, I have no idea.”

More titters of laughter.

“I’ll let you decide.”

Roy opened the book. The room fell silent. He began to read.

An extremely tall, thin woman wearing a black hoodie with the hood up and enormous tortoiseshell sunglasses arrived late, crept noiselessly into the audience, and sat down in the chair next to Tupper, ignoring his THIS CHAIR LEFT INTENTIONALLY VACANT sign.

Roy continued to read. This was the funny bit.

The rows of rapt listeners giggled and snorted uproariously. They were a good audience. Of course, he knew most of them. If they misbehaved, he could yell at them in the street. But he loved this bunch. He would write Silver next. Or Platinum. Or maybe Copper. And set it here, in Cobble Hill.

He turned the pages. Now for the sad part.

Breaths sucked in with just the right balance of empathy and distress. A few people, Roy included, began to cry.

He stopped reading and looked up. “You’re all right,” he said. “We’re all all right. The ending’s happy, I promise.”

Acknowledgments

This book would never have been written without the constant nagging of my well-meaning family members. “Are you done yet?” “Are you actually writing a book?” “Did you send your book to Bill Clegg?” Thank you to Brooklyn Writers Space for providing me with a no food, no phones, no talking place to escape their nagging, open my laptop, and hope something good would happen. The final result would not have made any sense at all without the intelligence and diligence of Bill Clegg, the real deal. Thank you, Bill.

Peter Borland at Atria gave the book a home as well as his kindness and attention. Thank you, Peter, I owe you lunch. Sean Delone kept me organized and calm when I was freaking out. Thank you also to Simon Toop and the other Cleggers. Thank you, Team Atria, especially Sherry Wasserman, Kyoko Watanabe, Gena Lanzi, and Laywan Kwan for the wonderful book jacket.

I would also like to thank my Brooklyn friends. I’m so lucky to have grown older and raised my children with you.