List $30.00

Written by Barbara Delinsky - audio book performed by Linda Emond - Abridged Fiction - 5 COMPACT DISCS - 5 hours

Publisher, Simon & Schuster Audioworks (June 2003)

What comes after the moment that forever changes your life?

This question haunts Julia Bechtel, Noah Prine, and Kim Collela, the only survivors of a terrible boating accident that claims the lives of nine other people off the coast of Maine.

Julia, a 40-year-old wife and mother, has always taken the path of least resistance. Feeling strangely connected to Noah, the divorced, brooding lobsterman who helped save her life, Julia begins to explore the unique possibilities offered by the quiet island of Big Sawyer, Maine. Suddenly, things that once seemed critical lose significance, and things that seemed inconsequential take on a whole new importance. With each passing moment, each new discovery, Julia grows more sure that after coming face to face with death, she must have more from life.

The Summer I Dared is a deeply moving story of the risky but rewarding search for self, and the irrepressible ability of the human spirit to rebound from disaster and to make life anew.

About the Author: Barbara Delinsky was born and raised in suburban Boston. "My mother's death, when I was eight, was the defining event of a childhood that was otherwise ordinary. I took piano lessons and flute lessons. I took ballroom dancing lessons. I went to summer camp through my fifteenth year, then spent my sixteenth summer learning to drive." After graduating from Newton High School, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology at Tufts University and a Master of Arts degree in Sociology at Boston College. "I wish I could say that I had a career in mind, but women were barely thinking about careers back then. The motivation behind my M.A. was to get a better job with better pay. My husband was just starting law school. We needed the money."

She never dreamed of having a writing career. "I had a vivid imagination, but it was a private one. As a child, for example, I concocted many a complex scenario to explain my mother's death and imminent resurrection. But I came from a family of lawyers, teachers, and homemakers. Although I knew that I could write well, it never occurred to me to use that skill professionally."

Following graduate school, she worked as a researcher with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and as a photographer and reporter for the Belmont Herald. "I did the newspaper work after my first son was born. Since I was heavily into taking pictures of him, I worked for the paper to support that habit. Initially, I wrote only in a secondary capacity, to provide copy for the pictures I took. In time, I realized that I was better at writing than photography." She used both skills doing volunteer work for hospital groups, and has served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and on the MGH's Women's Cancer Advisory Board.

Ms. Delinsky became a writer by fluke. Her twins were four when, by chance, she happened on a newspaper article profiling three female writers. Intrigued, she spent three months researching, plotting, and writing her own book -- and it sold.

That was in 1980. Since then, she has written and published over seventy novels. After starting in the field of romance, she moved into mainstream fiction with such titles as For My Daughters, Together Alone, and A Woman's Place. "It was a natural evolution for a woman whose interest in people pushed her toward psychology and sociology. People fascinate me; social dynamics fascinate me. Year by year, book by book, my stories became more complex until they had simply outgrown that initial format."

A master of emotional intensity, she touches the minds and hearts of her readers with intricately woven stories of domestic drama and relationships. "Readers identify with my characters. They know them. They are them. I am an everyday woman writing about everyday people facing not-so-everyday challenges." Her books are highly emotional, character-driven studies of marriage, parenthood, sibling rivalry, and friendship. They regularly appear on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today Bestseller Lists. The Summer I Dared, is a May 2004 publication by Scribner.

Her first foray into non-fiction occurred in October 2001 with the publication of Uplift: Secrets From The Sisterhood Of Breast Cancer Survivors. This is a handbook of practical tips and upbeat anecdotes that she compiled with the help of 350 breast cancer survivors from across the country, their families and friends. "The contributors to Uplift just blew me away with their generosity and their strength! This is the book that I wish I'd had way back when. There is no medical information here, nothing frightening. It is filled simply with practical, everyday advice from friends who've had breast cancer for those who are newly diagnosed." A second edition of Uplift, with new material included, was published in May 2003. All of her proceeds from Uplift go to breast cancer research.