Acknowledgments

Writing fiction about current events is a roller-coaster experience. All too often, I begin a book with a premise that feels implausible only to discover that by the time the book is published, the circumstances have become all too real. Whether the story has been about the vulnerability of women and children in immigrant families, the tribulations of young people with DACA, or the way politics can tear apart a community, I have often felt more like a journalist chronicling events than a fiction writer inventing them.

Voice with No Echo is no exception. What started as fiction—a story about a custodian in Max Zimmerman’s synagogue who gets caught up in a deportation—turned into reality a few months into the writing. That’s when an undocumented immigrant who had worked for two decades as a custodian at a local synagogue was arrested and deported. The man, who had no criminal record, arrived in Mexico without money, his cell phone, or ID. The officer who escorted him over the border predicted he would be kidnapped within a week. In a country he hadn’t set foot in since he was eighteen.

The synagogue members scrambled, much as they do in the novel. They hired lawyers. They raised money to take care of the man’s wife and American-born children. They wrote dozens of letters to officials. There were rallies. Articles in the local paper. Months went by with no news. I finished my book. It had a happy ending. The man’s fate is far less certain. He did get back to the United States, but it took ten months and a change in a federal court ruling to make it happen. His long-term prospects for asylum remain unknown.

Unlike fiction, nothing is for certain.

Stories like these—of people caught up in events beyond their control—are what drive my fiction. Thank you, readers, for your support. And many thanks, too, to the individuals who continue to provide me with guidance and encouragement throughout the series. Special thanks, as always, to Gene West, for his insights into law enforcement and his pitch-perfect sense of story. Thanks, also, to Janis Pomerantz, who reviewed the synagogue portions of my story for wording and accuracy, and to my agent, Stephany Evans and Ayesha Pande Literary, who are always there to lend an ear, even as I had to put the book on hold for a personal emergency.

Thanks to my editor, Michaela Hamilton, marketing director Vida Engstrand, and Kensington CEO Steven Zacharius for championing what some might call a controversial series. I don’t know many publishing houses that would take such a risk—and be so supportive throughout.

And most of all, my thanks to my family: my husband, Tom; son, Kevin; daughter, Erica; and stepfather, Bill. I couldn’t do this without you.