Writing

Talking Bones

17-year-old Danni Nicholson travels from her New Jersey home to Africa to spend summer vacation with her journalist father. After he fails to meet her at the airport, Danni learns her father's in jail. In danger herself, Danni flees. Along the way she discovers she has the courage to rescue a group of orphans, the heart to find love in an unlikely place, and the ability to understand the divining bones of the Shona. But what the bones say terrifies her.

This manuscript is represented by Erin Murphy of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency.

Jumping Off Trains

The small, rickety train chugged slowly through the jungle toward La Ceiba, Honduras. Still early morning, it was already hot and humid, and the mosquitoes were rapacious. As we decelerated into a curve, I caught sight of a Garifuna woman ten meters from the track. She lifted a wooden rod above her head and plunged it hard into a long, white stocking. I looked at Eli, my "fixer," that is to say, my guide-driver- interpreter, and raised my eyebrow in question. He'd seen her, too. We didn't weigh the pros and cons of what to do. I pulled on my backpack of camera gear, Eli tapped our farewell on the engineer's shoulder, and we jumped off the train.

From my essay in Contemporary American Women: Our Defining Passages.
All Things That Matter Press, 2009.