Figures in Silk
by Vanora Bennett

List Price: $25.99
Pages: 464
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780061689840
Publisher: William Morrow

You get what you want in the end, if you just wait long enough. I grew up not knowing what to be. A surgeon? No, too scared of blood. A watchmaker? Too fiddly. Prime Minister? A nun? A novelist? The grown-ups nixed all these ideas, especially the novelist option. I'd have to live a bit before I had anything to write about, they said.

So, instead, and pretty much by accident, I fell into journalism. They were hiring Russian speakers at Reuters, and I happened to have a degree in Russian, so off I went. Not, as it turned out, to Russia, or anywhere near. First to Paris, then to Southeast Asia, then to the wars of Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique in southern Africa. It was quite a surprise when, after six years, I finally got posted to Russia just as the age of Russian capitalism began. I loved all the excitement of that. But once I started to want to come home, it turned out to be no easier to leave Russia than it had been to get there in the first place.

It was many years, several jobs as one sort of Russia expert or another, and a couple of children later before I finally thought: Hold on a minute, isn't it about time I wrote that novel?

I've been writing historical fiction ever since, and enjoying every minute of it.

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