The better I got on with my father, the more scared I became that he might die and leave me alone in this life without the conversations, shelter, and inner peace that his presence gave me. For years I couldn’t sleep because of a nagging, bitter anxiety that kept me awake at night: what if my best friend, my confidant in tax and “man” matters and my teammate in the George household, were really to die one day, this person whose love and insight and understanding I cherished, whose light and bigheartedness I needed?

“I’d never survive,” I whispered desperately into the darkness of my room when I was in my midtwenties. Later, I numbed my panic with whiskey, a drink that gave me no pleasure. Later still, I reassured myself with the thought that he would die only a long way into the future. He was a strong, energetic, and loving man, and so much life would be hard to extinguish.

It all happened in the space of eleven days, and on April 4, 2011, Wolfgang George died far too early, at the age of seventy-two. I was thirty-eight, and the person I was before did not survive.

My fear of Dad’s dying, and then his actual, horribly sudden death, which blew a hole in the normal course of my life, have shaped my life and my writing. Dying and death. Mourning and surviving. Our own fear of one-day-not-being-here-anymore. The question: was that it? And the haunting doubt: when death comes, will I have lived the life I might have lived?

These existential questions about death have colored my last three novels, The Little Paris Bookshop, The Little French Bistro, and The Book of Dreams. To produce these books, which address issues of being and no-longer-being, have no happy endings, and are therefore not very “market friendly,” I needed book people who were willing to tread this kind of literary path with me. First, an author as manic as I am—my husband, Jens. He’s always the first to fan the sparks of my ideas, saying, “Yes, do it. Break through boundaries. Why write otherwise?” Discussions with him open thousands of doors in my mind.

My second traveling companion is my editor Andrea Müller, a woman who never lies. This can occasionally cause me pain and shame, but her critical enthusiasm is the foundation on which I build my stories, in the certain knowledge that Mrs. Müller will always make the good things better and give me an earful about whatever didn’t make the grade.

The reactions of initial readers such as my congenial final editor Gisela Klemt, my congenial agent Anja Keil, and my meticulous webmistress Angela Schwarze tell me if I’ve “bared” my soul enough in my manuscript. I would also like to thank Barbara Henze and Marion Barciaga for their ideas and feedback.