I am a writer.

That is what I am. That is what I do. If an examination were performed on my soul, instead of hearing a heartbeat, a stethoscope would quickly detect the clickity click of fingers on a keyboard, or the soft scrape of a number two pencil against the narrow rules of a yellow legal pad.

I decided to become a writer when I was seventeen, because reading was what I loved to do most, and the only way I could figure out how to spend the rest of my life reading was to write for a living.

So far, it has worked.

The decision to write, however, was no more a guarantee of a literary lifestyle than if I had scrawled “I will be a writer” on a steamed-up mirror in a bathroom after taking a hot shower.

All of that changed after I moved to New York. I was working in New Rochelle and living in the attic apartment of a house owned by Mr. and Mrs. Bloom. He was a quiet, scholarly piano teacher, she was a talkative, kind-hearted housewife, and they supplemented their income by renting rooms to young women like me. Mrs. Bloom baked delicious melt-in-your-mouth shortbread, and she always offered me samples when I passed through her kitchen on my way upstairs. She also gave me unrestricted access to all of the books on the glass-covered shelves behind the grand piano in their living room.