The Long Way Home: The Story Behind The Tender
People often ask writers where an idea comes from. CHOSEN was my MFA thesis inspired both by my work in adoption and our baptism by fire into parenthood. What Pretty Gets You was actually the first story I ever wrote; an exploration of the limitations of physical beauty in both place and person, and an exploration of female friendship. The Summer After was literally a dream I had while on book tour for my debut novel, an outline scribbled on a long flight home, a study of place, and the island my husband and I once called home.
The Tender is different. I know exactly where it began. This is the story behind the story, and perhaps why this one took the long way home.
In 2013, I was still traveling to book clubs for Chosen and crafting what would eventually become What Pretty Gets You. At home, however, my life looked more like unpaid Uber driver than author. My middle son was a nine-year-old goalie on an elite AAA travel hockey team, and our weeknights and weekends had become a rhythm of predawn departures, freezing ice rinks, coffee gone cold, hotels and long drives with a rotation of teammates and damp gear stuffed into ‘locker room’—the third row of our Expedition.
If you've ever been a hockey parent, you already know the smell before you even open the hatch.
In that year, all three children were playing hockey, lacrosse, soccer, piano, violin and riding horses. I remember sitting in the bleachers at the school Christmas program, trying to sketch out impossible weekend logistics: 3 kids, 8 sports, 13 events, and 1 mom. J was abroad, finishing up the last elements of project management for an eco-resort off the coast of Honduras, where we had all lived off grid, homeschooling for one magical year. Looking back, I can appreciate the insanity of our transition back to the States. My children insist the memories and life lessons were formative.
Back then, I carried a notebook everywhere—a bible of which kid goes where when and with what gear—not because I intended to write a hockey novel. Between periods, I scribbled snippets of conversations in the stands, little superstition rituals the players and especially the goalie repeated before games, the way teammates goaded each other one minute and furiously defended the next. I watched children learning how to win graciously, lose painfully, work together, and perhaps internalize more pressure than children should carry.
I wasn't collecting plot; I was accumulating evidence of our year, and observations on boys looking for mentors to manhood.
People often ask how much of Jace is my son. The honest answer is: less than you might think. My son's journey gave me the doorway into the story, but Jace became his own person very quickly. The earnestness, the mantle of responsibility came from my goalie, but like all good fictional characters, Jace eventually started making decisions I hadn't planned.
One thing, however, never changed: Jace had to be a goalie.
There is no lonelier position in sports. When everyone else celebrates, the goalie quietly resets for the next shot. When the team loses, the goalie assumes responsibility for the scoreboard, regardless of how they played or how many shots they faced. It's a position that shoulders enormous responsibility while standing, quite literally, alone. It became the perfect metaphor for the story I wanted to tell about boys looking for the men to carry them across the river.
And our family was going through its own transition. While my husband was overseas for his final year on Isla de Utila, I had returned to Pennsylvania, temporarily parenting on my own and wondering whether organized sports, particularly travel hockey, could provide the kinds of mentors every child needs as they journey toward adulthood.
Then my father died unexpectedly.
Grief has a way of making you pay attention to different things. Suddenly, I found myself thinking less about hockey and more about the quiet adults who impact children's lives the way my father shaped ours. And the circle expanded: Coaches. Grandparents. Teachers. Siblings. The people who simply show up and quietly point the next generation in the right direction.
That's when The Tender truly began.
But it would take more than a decade to reach readers. In the meantime, I wrote and published other novels, founded a publishing imprint, writing retreat and editing company, became a professor of writing, launched a second pen name, and learned more about the writing industry than I ever expected to know. Yet this manuscript remained on my laptop, patiently waiting.
Although The Tender is a work of fiction, many of its moments were inspired by real life; conversations, hockey rinks, and people who impacted my family. The President is also real, and many of our chickens (past and present) get their moment in the sun too.
MY WISH FOR THE TENDER
I imagine families who have lived in the world of youth sports recognize themselves in these pages—not only in the pressure, but also in the extraordinary friendships, generosity, and community that can grow inside cold arenas on winter mornings. Children can follow Jace and Charlie’s quest for Nationals while quietly absorbing the subtler threads. Because at its heart, this isn't merely a middle grade hockey book; it’s a place for conversations to begin.
I hope every reader, whether they've ever laced up skates, dressed a goalie, or simply loved a child through difficult seasons, finds a little of their own Yoda in these pages.