This week I’ve been watching the olympics in the evenings, and going over the copyedited manuscript of SALT during the daytime hours. I’m glad to be a writer, rather than an athlete. We can take our time, and make our mistakes, without crowds of people watching us; there is teamwork involved (editors, book designers, and all the people who get our books into the hands of readers), and there are deadlines to meet; there is sometimes competition, but it’s different from athletic competition. I like the fact that the success of our work never comes down to how well we do in one specific moment. We can take weeks, months, even years, to think about something until it seems right.

This new book, SALT, is like that. I’ve been thinking about the story for over twenty years, trying to find a way to tell it in a way that children can understand and appreciate. Set in 1812, it explores a friendship between two 12-year-olds, a Miami (Native American) boy named Anikwa, and James, the son of a trader.

SALT: A story of Friendship in a Time of War, will be published next summer by Frances Foster Books/FSG/MacMillan. I’ll post the cover soon.