A Recommendation for THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY by Kathryn Fitzmaurice

A year ago, I was in the midst of revising my middle grade novel. My editor had told me there was something still missing in the voice of my main character--something intangible. She suggested I think of THE WIZARD OF OZ, which begins in black and white, then bursts into color. In some of my scenes she was getting those bursts of color, but others were still in static black and white. I was struggling with what was needed to elevate those scenes to technicolor.

The answer came to me in one of those "aha" moments in the midst of an SCBWI presentation by Molly O'Neill (Asst. Editor at The Bowen Press), in which she was reading the first pages of the books which would debut with HarperCollins' new imprint. These are the opening words of Kathryn Fitzmaurice's middle grade novel, THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY:

"We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the back yard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around a picket fence. But that wasn't enough to keep my daddy from going to jail the year I turned eleven. I told my best friend, Frankie, that it was hard to tell what something was like on the inside just by looking at the outside. And that our house was like one of those See's candies with beautiful swirled chocolate on the outside, but sometimes hiding coconut flakes on the inside, all gritty and hard, like undercooked white rice."

Something about that conversational dip into both the character's (Groovy Robinson) soul and the author's (Kathryn Fitzmaurice) struck a chord in me. In that instant I realized I needed to change the point of view in my own novel from 3rd person to 1st person in order to find a stronger, more colorful voice for my character.

I remembered the title of the novel, but not the author's name. Five months later, at the SCBWI conference in LA, I was invited to have lunch with a group of authors from the Class of 2k9. When everyone introduced themselves and the titles of their books, I recognized THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY and met Kathryn in person. I was so excited to make that connection!

This is the week of Kathryn's debut as an author, and THE YEAR THE SWALLOWS CAME EARLY will not disappoint you. You'll find that "Kathryn Fitzmaurice's tender debut novel is as full of promise as the swallows that return home to San Juan Capistrano every spring."