The Department of Lost & Found (34 page)

Acknowledgments

for printing your own three hundred–page copies without complaint, but more importantly, thank you for your feedback, your enthusiasm, and your friendship. I am many times blessed. And a big shout-out is reserved for Caryn Karmatz-Rudy who helped hone my fiction skills and encouraged me to keep at it for reasons none other than the fact that she’s a rock-star.

This book touches on sensitive, painful subjects, and I’m humbled by the women who shared their stories with me. I cannot even hope to have done justice to the insidious disease that is breast cancer, but I also hope that I haven’t misrepresented it by too much either. For the women who have stared down cancer, you have my admiration for your courage.

Thank you for allowing me to tell this story, as a way of working through my own grief, when breast cancer robbed me of a dear friend. Thank you also to the Prostic and Lundblad families, as well as the board of Meta-Cancer.org, for understanding the reasons that compelled me to write the book. And a big, hearty thank-you is sent out to Dr. Pamela Munster at the University of South Florida, for advising me on medical facts and treatments.

I must reserve my final thanks for those who are forced to tolerate me on a daily basis. Should I become a best-selling author, I will, no doubt, prove to be even more insufferable, and yet they love me still. Mom and Dad, thank you for bestowing me with the confidence, creativity, and freedom to ever dream of making it as a writer. And to my family: my husband, Adam, for becoming and being the man I needed, and to my children, Campbell and Amelia, for whom my heart beats every day. For you, everything and always.

About the Author

After losing a close friend to breast cancer at the age of thirty-one, Allison Winn Scotch cathartically set out to write a story with a happier ending. And while Allison is the first to point out that her protagonist Natalie and her friend share very few similarities, her friend’s resilient spirit and courage in the face of an illness that took her life are felt throughout the novel.

Winn Scotch has contributed to
Family Circle, Glamour, InStyle
Weddings, Men’s Health, Parents, Prevention, Redbook, Self, Shape,
Woman’s Day
and
Women’s Health,
among others. She lives in New York with her husband, her son and daughter, and their dog. To find out more, visit www.allisonwinnscotch.com.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Praise for

THE DEPAR

THE DEP

TMENT OF LOST & FOUND

AR

TMENT OF LOST & FOUND

by Allison Winn Scotch

“Funny, touching, tender, true. . . . I loved it.”

—Pamela Redmond Satran, author of
Suburbanistas

“Allison Winn Scotch is the real deal and
The Department
of Lost & Found
is one you absolutely won’t want to miss.

Sweet, funny, and totally endearing—this book grabbed me from page one and didn’t let go.”

—Johanna Edwards, author of
The Next Big Thing

“Allison Winn Scotch’s thoroughly engaging and optimistic debut novel simply sparkles!”

—Claire Cook, author of
Life’s a Beach

“Real, honest, engrossing, and funny, too. Plus any book with a Bob Barker cameo is aces with me.”

—Valerie Frankel, author of
I Take This Man

“
Smart and engrossing . . . so real and raw I’d have sworn it was a memoir.”

—Jen Lancaster, author of
Bitter Is the New Black

“A story about strength, courage and finding your own way . . . a smart and moving book.”

—Cara Lockwood, author of
I Did (But I Wouldn’t Now)

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE DEPARTMENT OF LOST AND FOUND. Copyright © 2007 by Allison Winn Scotch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader March 2008 ISBN 978-0-06-164591-4

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About the Publisher

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Document Outline

• Title Page
  
• Dedication Page
  
• Contents
  
  • Round One: September
    
    • Chapter One
      
    • Chapter Two
      
    • Chapter Three
      
  • Round Two: October
    
    • Chapter Four
      
    • Chapter Five
      
    • Chapter Six
      
  • Round Three: November
    
    • Chapter Seven
      
    • Chapter Eight
      
    • Chapter Nine
      
    • Chapter Ten
      
  • Round Four: December
    
    • Chapter Eleven
      
    • Chapter Twelve
      
    • Chapter Thirteen
      
  • Round Five: January
    
    • Chapter Fourteen
      
    • Chapter Fifteen
      
  • Round Six: February
    
    • Chapter Sixteen
      
    • Chapter Seventeen
      
    • Chapter Eighteen
      
  • Round Seven: March
    
    • Chapter Nineteen
      
    • Chapter Twenty
      
  • Round Eight: April
    
    • Chapter Twenty-One
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Two
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Three
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Four
      
    • Chapter Twenty-Five
      
  • Remission: July
    
    • Chapter Twenty-Six
      
  • Acknowledgments
    
  • About the Author
    
  • Praise
    
  • Copyright Notice
    
  • About the Publisher