Why did I write “Journey Back To You”

Why I Wrote Journey Back to You

One of the most frequent questions I get from readers is: Why did you write this book?

I’ve always said I was going to write a book. My husband, Al, encouraged me, and I finally decided to create the kind of story I most love to read—romance and women’s fiction. But the truth is, there were several moments and influences that pushed me from “someday” into now.

Rediscovering an Old Story

While helping my daughter, Aliza, with her career, I passed along some of my old files. As she looked through them, she found a story I wrote for a college creative writing class called “The Bridge.”

I had completely forgotten about it. Imagine my shock when she told me that she thought they were good and that I should “do more” with it. When you read Journey Back to You, you’ll see why The Bridge matters so much.

The Music That Shaped Me

I also have to confess to a lifelong “affair” with Bruce Springsteen. Bruce was the first concert I ever went to. He was really young; the ticket cost six dollars and the venue was only half full. I was, however, forever hooked. A lot of his songs are about love and longing, and the settings are usually in the rust belt or the midwestern factory towns. The characters tend to be young men, working in blue collar jobs, union jobs, yearning for a better and more exciting life.

They made me fall in love with a kind of character: gritty, blue-collar, yearning for more. A particularly strong romance ended when my brother threatened to tell my very proper “you’re going to college” parents about him. Remembering is kind of bittersweet.

This experience shaped me in many ways.

Writing With Purpose

I’m empathetic by nature and deeply aware of current issues: drugs, the economy, the growing divide between rich and working-class communities. Those themes live under the surface of Journey Back to You.

So yes, it’s a coming-of-age romance between a young working man and an entitled young woman discovering who she really is. But it’s also a story about class, about decay and resilience, about how love doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it’s shaped by the world around us.

That’s why I wrote Journey Back to You: to blend the personal with the universal, to honor the stories and influences that shaped me, and to invite readers to see themselves in the journey.

Al & I at the Bruce Springsteen concert