In the spring of the sixth year, something unexpected happened to The Choosing.
It had been in print for three years and had found its audience in the quiet way of honest books, steadily rather than suddenly, the readership growing through recommendation rather than campaign. Sara Osei had reported that the letters kept coming, that she received them regularly, forwarded them to me when they were the kind that warranted a response.
What happened in spring was this. A literary prize committee shortlisted it.
Not a local prize. A significant one. The kind that changes the audience of a book from the people who need it to all the people who might need it, which is a different and larger category.
I heard about the shortlist on a Tuesday morning from my editor, who called with the containe
