July 31, 2008:

There are just thirty-four days to go before Hannah's Dream is released, and I'm getting nervous. Will you like the book? Will anyone? People sometimes compare "birthing" a book to sending a child out into the world, but let me tell you: I'm a lot more confident about my 17-year-old daughter Kerry's likely success in the world than I am about Hannah and the rest of the fictional characters in Hannah's Dream. Kerry can speak for herself; the Hannah gang has only the words I've given them. Will they hold up? Will you find them sympathetic (or not, in the case of character Harriet Saul)? Will you believe in the universe I've created for them? And, as a mini-book tour is taking shape in September and October, will I be able to talk about all of this in an intelligent and entertaining way? You can see what I conjure at night in the dark.

So here's a head start: a primer for Hannah and her friends.

The setting: The Max L. Biedelman Zoo in Bladenham, Washington, a small town in farm country not far from Puget Sound.

The problem: Hannah, a lone Asian elephant at the failing Max L. Biedelman Zoo, is developing ominous health problems and so is Samson Brown, her keeper for the last 41 years. He needs to retire, but how can he unless he finds a solution to her broken-down feet and a new keeper who will be as devoted to her as he has been?

The cast:

• Hannah: a 44-year-old Asian elephant who's lived at the Biedelman Zoo since 1955, when she was brought there from Burma. She is the zoo's only elephant, which is never a good thing for this social species. When Sam first met her, Hannah reminded him of nothing so much as a worn-out, hip-shot, low-slung, dog-ugly, poorly dressed old floozy in bad shoes. And yet there is a soul, a thing of pure beauty, shining behind those eyes.
   
• Samson Brown: a 68-year-old black man in his sixties who is a newly-diagnosed diabetic with an ulcerated foot. He stands upright and proud, no gut whatsoever, not even a little one he thinks people would have forgiven him for, at his age. Seeing him from the back, you might think he was twenty, but when he turns around his face gives him away. It is deeply lined, like a roadmap starting someplace far away.
   
• Corrina Brown: Sam's devoted wife, a beautician who has stood in for Hannah's mother all these years. She is 65, solid as an old tree, someone you can get a purchase on even in a high wind, with a laugh like warm syrup pouring from a jug.
   
• Max L. Biedelman: the eccentric founder of the Max L. Biedelman Zoo, Hannah's original owner and Sam's mentor and friend. A committed cross-dresser, she is a strapping, long-legged, long-toothed woman who wears men's bush clothing and carries a shooting stick or riding crop wherever she goes. The only exceptions are the flowing Turkish robes she sometimes dons on cool winter evenings.
   
• Harriet Saul: the new zoo president whose mission is to revitalize the failing institution. In middle age she is stocky, shrewd and focused: fifty-two years of plainness have tempered her like hand-forged steel. She recognizes that it is her lot to fall in love with institutions instead of men.
   
• Truman Levy: the zoo's business manager and recent divorcee, he is a good man who tries to do the right thing even when it's not in his own best interests--like buying and caring for his son's pot-bellied pig Miles. He is accused by his ex-wife of being the least memorable person she's ever met. He is one of Hannah's chief champions.
   
• Winslow Levy: Truman's 11-year-old son and an accomplished classical pianist.
   
• Miles: Truman and Winslow's irrepressible pot-bellied pig.
   
• Matthew and Lavinia Levy: Truman's parents, lawyers who help find a solution to Sam and Hannah's dilemma.
   
• Neva Wilson: the zoo's newly hired, second elephant keeper, who works along side Sam to find a solution. She is slight and tensile, red-haired and freckled, with the thin, smart face of a fox. She becomes Sam and Hannah's staunchest ally and supporter.
   
• Johnson Johnson: Neva's childlike landlord, a folk artist and cat-lover to whom pizza is the food of the gods.

Come back again soon, and I'll tell you how these characters have been received by the few who've had the chance to read advance copies of Hannah's Dream--and how I'm dealing with my bad case of the jitters.