Live from Oak Park

Last year, a librarian named Carolyn DeCoursey at the Maze Branch of the Oak Park Public Library read and enjoyed one of the many books in her stack of new arrivals, a debut conspiracy novel set in the New York art world. She liked it so much, in fact, that she started recommending it to her patrons, and one day, one of them said: “I know the author. He’s my neighbor—and he lives only three blocks away!” The novel, of course, was The Icon Thief, and although my author biography clearly states that I live in Oak Park, that part of the cover was evidently covered up by a sticker with the library bar code.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Carolyn at other library events, and that serendipitous connection was the essential first step that led to my reading tonight at 7 pm at the Maze Branch. It’s going to be a good event—I hope that some of you in the Chicago area will be able to attend—and it has a lot of sentimental importance to me, since the Maze Branch is where I intend to take my daughter Beatrix as soon as she’s old enough. (She’s already been there once, but she slept through most of the visit.) And the moral of the story, obviously, is that whether you’re a writer, a reader, or just a good neighbor, it pays to be friends with your local librarian.