Somewhere Out There with Amy Hatvany

I met Amy Hatvany at the Tucson book festival number of years ago.  We were on the same panel and I felt like I had met my soul sister.  I loved her from the start and am a fan of her books and her massive heart.  So delighted to have Amy on my blog as she shares about her new release,Somewhere Out There.

Here’s Amy!

As so often happens in my writing life, the idea for Somewhere Out There began in the smallest of ways, after my cousin—a wonderful, single man who has fostered and adopted several children over the years—told me how one of the young boys he was fostering reacted upon seeing a fully stocked pantry in their home. This six-year-old child had never lived in an actual home, instead spending most of his short life sleeping in car with his mother.

My cousin’s description of this undernourished child’s reaction to seeing a pantry full of food—”Is this all ours?” the boy asked as he sat down and began to touch the cans of peaches and boxes of rice. “Do we really get to eat it?”—was an image that my heart couldn’t shake, and it was from there that the premise for Somewhere Out There was born.

As I began my research, I learned that a child enters the foster care system every two minutes in the United States, most commonly because of parental abuse or neglect. Of these children, some are adopted, but most spend years bouncing from one foster family to another or living in a state institution, never having a place to truly call home. I thought about what kind of circumstances would lead a mother to sign away her parental rights, giving up her two young daughters to the state because she was unable to care for them. I imagined how different the sisters’ lives might be if one of them was adopted and the other ended up never having a family to call her own. I considered what might happen if the younger sister’s adoptive parents waited more than three decades to tell her that she had an older sister, and how the two sisters find each other, then have to decide whether or not to search out the mother who abandoned them.

How different would these two women be, considering how each of them was raised? Would they connect, simply because they were sisters, or would it easier for both of them to just walk away? And what about their mother? What had she gone through over the years? How did she survive the guilt of abandoning her own children, and what happens when they manage to find her? These are just some of the questions I address in this story, told from all three women’s point of view.

By the time I finished writing, I felt as though I had experienced each woman’s journey firsthand. Somewhere Out There was a joy to create, and I hope that after reading it, you end up feeling the same way.

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Thank you, Amy for sharing with us!  Readers, I hope you’ll get your own copy of this book to enjoy.  She has a talent for penning such realistic, flawed characters who steal into your heart and never really let go.  Look for Amy and her new release online:
Amazon | B&N | IndieBound | Amy’s Website

Before you go, I have a special giveaway of some of my favorite women’s fiction novels by my favorite authors and friends for one lucky winner.  Leave a comment and you’ll be entered for a chance to win!  Contest ends Sunday with winner announced Monday.