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Tell Us We're Home

Tell Us We're Home came about in a variety of ways. A long time ago I was doing research on nannies and wound up spending time with nannies in the park, or at home, watching and listening to them, watching how they juggled their own children with those they took care of. Soon after I moved to the suburbs--a very strange experience for someone like me, who had grown up and lived in NYC for most of my life. I felt like an immigrant. And then I began to look around and think about the real immigrants in the suburbs. My prior books were about young immigrants but the settings were cities--the traditional place for immigrants. But today, the suburbs are where immigrants come. And so I became fascinated with how young immigrants find their way here, in quintessential American towns. I wondered, too, what it's like in the suburbs, which are often tightly knit and nowadays rely on immigrant women for nannies and housekeepers--what might it be like for their kids? And finally, I wanted to write a girl's friendship novel, no different than other teen friendship novels, but on that offers a slightly different perspective.