The Sign for Drowning began as a short story based on a real event from my childhood.  One summer in the Hamptons, my father and his friend took my sister into the ocean in an inflatable boat.  A large wave crashed over them, throwing my sister into the sea.  She did not immediately surface, and they could not see her in the opaque water.  As panic set in, my parents' friend felt my sister brush against her leg and pulled her to safety.  She emerged sputtering and said, "That was a big one."  Crisis averted.  In my novel, the child is lost, and it is the older sister, Anna, who watches helplessly from the shore, forever haunted by the tragedy.  The Sign for Drowning is her story to tell.

My first novel, The Sign for Drowning, took many years to come to light.  The first draft of the novel was actually my MFA thesis at Sarah Lawrence College.  After completing it, I put it on a shelf for several years, but the story never left me.  In 2005, I decided to do a major rewrite and submitted the manuscript to The William Faulkner-William Wisdom Competition, sponsored by the Pirate's Alley William Faulkner House in New Orleans.  I was thrilled to learn that The Sign for Drowning was named a finalist and then awarded Second Runner Up for Best Novel.  Soon after, I started working with my agent, Joelle Delbourgo, who proved invaluable in getting the book into the hands of Emily Bower at Shambhala. The Sign for Drowning was finally published by Trumpeter in June, 2008.

Deaf culture and sign language play an important role in this book. I learned ASL while writing the book and that led to a job working with deaf people for several years.  While working with the deaf, I was told lots of great personal stories and I was exposed to Deaf culture and some of the historical controversies I try to portray in the book.  Some of the most gratifying responses I've received have been readers telling me how interested they became to learn about the deaf world and that they discovered something they never knew before.