Maggie Nelson stood at the front of the room beside a table on which sat a display of copies of Superior Blue. Grace Fitzgerald was seated at the table, and next to her a boy of nine or ten, with the same honey-colored hair as she. The author wore a light green blouse, probably silk. A small gold cross hung on a thin gold chain about her neck. She was a striking woman, even more so because of her nose, a prominence that resembled a raptor’s beak and that dominated an otherwise soft-featured and lovely face.

Maggie Nelson introduced the author. After polite applause, Grace Fitzgerald said, “First of all, I’d like to thank Maggie for hosting this event. I’d also like to thank so many of you for turning out this evening, although I suspect some of you are here mostly because of the wonderful food waiting for you afterward, courtesy of Fairfield’s. Thanks, Jackie.” She gave a brief wave to a slender, dark-haired woman standing at a table filled with trays of cookies and exotic-looking bars. “And finally I’d like to thank the Friends of the Aurora Library for sponsoring this event and so many others like it.”

She sent a smile in the direction of Jo, for Jo headed that organization and had been the one who’d first approached Grace Fitzgerald with the invitation. Jo had liked the woman immediately and immensely. She found her intelligent-which she’d expected-and also gracious and full of wonderful humor. More important, she felt a kind of kinship with Grace Fitzgerald. In a town like Aurora where not even a dozen years of residence and work on civic organizations were a guarantee of acceptance, she felt as if she’d found someone who could be a friend, someone who, like her, might always be an outsider.

The book, the author explained briefly, was the story of a rich young woman who fell in love with a poor young man.