Dear Reader,

In September 2006, Milkweed Editions published my seventh novel, “Gardenias,” a follow-up to “The Cape Ann.” In “Gardenias,” narrator Lark Erhardt, her mother Arlene and her Aunt Betty continue the train trip they began at the end of “The Cape Ann,” arriving in San Diego during the exciting and uncertain days of early World War II.

With a magnificent harbor, naval installation, Army and Marine bases, and an emerging defense industry, the Southern California city is a pulsing center of America’s effort to respond to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the threat posed by Hitler’s seemingly irresistable sweep across Europe.

Arlene and Betty are caught up in the brave new world of Rosie The Riveter, U.S.O. canteens and Sunday dinners for soldiers — all of it knitted together with the dark thread of fear for the lives of loved ones and strangers.

Meanwhile, lonely and angry with her mother for dragging her far from home, Lark creates a world inhabited by the souls of the dead — the only people she can count on not to change and not to leave her.

I invite you to read “Gardenias.” If you haven’t read “The Cape Ann,” don’t worry. “Gardenias” stands on its own legs.

But, now, of course, it’s time for me to return to two new books I’ve begun to work on: “The Woman on the Roof” and “The Woman Who Tried to Be Somebody” (working titles). The first is partly set in Minneapolis and partly in the Harvester, Minnesota, that you came to know in “The Cape Ann.” The second is wholly a Harvester story.

I enjoy returning to characters I’ve written about earlier. Reuniting with them, I find that they are new to me in ways I couldn’t have foreseen, just as the people in my own life are continually revealing unsuspected facets and depths. That is the sort of person I like in my personal world, and the sort of person I like to people my books with.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope that you’ll come back, as this site will be updated from time to time.

FAITH SULLIVAN