One of the reasons I’ve always loved doing live events is having memorable encounters with readers along the way. I call them my Unforgettables. One of the most memorable of those was, in fact, with someone I never actually met. I was autographing a book for a woman at the newly opened West Seattle Fred Meyer when a man, who turned out to be the woman’s husband, showed up behind her back. He peered at me over her shoulder, made a face, and then muttered in disappointment, “Oh, it’s you. I guess I’ll go home and order a pizza. She sure as hell isn’t gonna cook tonight!” That’s an Unforgettable for sure.

As part of my publishing contract, I’m entitled to what are called “author copies,”—twenty-five copies of the hardbacks and fifty copies of the paperbacks. I also receive author copies when older paperbacks are reissued. If you multiply that by sixty-some books over a period for forty-some years, that adds up to a lot of books—hundreds of books, in fact, which I’m not allowed to sell. So, they gather dust—boxes and boxes of them.

For a while, we stored the books in the attic of our garage here in Bellevue. After an earthquake scare in the Seattle area, my husband pointed out that the attic ceiling wasn’t designed to carry that kind of load. So in the early 2000s, when FedEx offered to ship books for free to members of the military serving in Desert Storm, we packed up 35 bankers’ boxes of autographed books and delivered them to FedEx.

Months later I received an email from a wounded soldier serving with the 85th Airborne Division in Iraq. Cesar Flores was in the hospital recovering from injuries sustained when an IED destroyed the vehicle in which he was riding. He had been the only survivor. While in the hospital, he was given one of those books, a signed copy of Desert Heat. The southern Arizona setting had reminded him of his home state of Texas. He and I corresponded for months after that. Much later, when I had a cancer scare—solved one-and-done by surgery—he sent me his St. Micheal’s medal to keep me safe. St. Michael is the patron Saint of the 85th Airborne. Another Unforgettable.

That FedEx shipment happened a long time ago, which means lots more boxes filled with author copies have arrived over the years. At last count there were seventy banker’s boxes stowed in our storage unit. Fortunately, the unit has a concrete floor, so weight isn’t an issue.

A few months ago I read an article about a young man here in Washington named Bryson Fico. He had started an organization called Pages of Redemption which provides donated books to jail and prison facilities all over the state. Reading the article reminded me of yet another Unforgettable.

I was doing a signing at a library in Salt Lake City when a woman showed up asking if I would autograph a book for her son. While I was doing so, she explained that he had gotten caught up with the wrong people in high school and ended up spending several years in juvie. While there, he somehow started reading my books, and his mother said that reading stories about normal people helped him change his life. By the time we spoke, he was on the straight and narrow, married with a young child, and working at a steady job.

At the time I read about Pages of Redemption I was deep in the weeds writing Smoke and Mirrors, so instead of contacting him right then, I made a note of the name and promised myself that I’d been in touch as soon as I finished the manuscript—in a couple of weeks, or so I thought. Little did I know it would take several more months, but when I finished, I contacted him.

Bryson and books for Pages of Redemption

He lives in Okanogan. He has a partner named Antonio who lives on this side of the mountains. This week the two of them, along with a third helper, showed up to take as many boxes as he could load into his Honda. It looks as though Bryson was able to take at least fifteen of those boxes back to Okanogan. Antonio will come collect the remainder sometime next week. I hope the books have all gone to a good home.

And now, speaking of crime and punishment, here’s a final thought:

The last two weeks have been appalling. Regardless of your political leanings, I can’t imagine not feeling sympathy for a mother having to tell her three-year-old child that Daddy won’t be coming home anymore because “he’s on a work trip with Jesus.” Or for a pair of shocked parents who had to see on the TV news for the first time that their son—the boy they raised—was most likely a cold-blooded killer, and then, once they knew that chilling truth, having the courage to actually turn him in.

Those people have been on my prayer list ever since that terrible Friday. If you happen to be one of my prayerful readers, I hope you’ll consider adding them to yours as well. Unlike Erika Kirk, I’ve not yet reached the point of actual forgiveness, but now I’ve added that troubled young man to my prayer list as well.

Maybe by reading books provided by people like Bryson Fico’s Pages of Redemption, he, too, will be able to find his road to redemption.