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Philadelphia Inquirer editor Kevin Ferris and I have been working together through many columns now, and I am always—always—grateful for his generosity. He has a huge heart. He allows me to write from mine. I'm neither a journalist nor an academic, and I'll never be famous. Kevin doesn't mind.

This month I wanted to celebrate West Philadelphia, where part of my new novel, One Thing Stolen (Chronicle Books), is rooted (much of the book also takes place in Philadelphia's sister city, Florence, Italy). I wanted to return to those images and places that inspired scenes in the book—and to Lori Waselchuk, a West Philadelphian who walked me through those streets two years ago to help me see them with insiderly eyes.

Lori is both a maker of art and a promoter of it. She is the force, for example, behind Ci-Lines, about which I wrote on this blog a few days ago.

To Kevin, who lets me love out loud, and to Lori, who gave me ideas that kept me writing forward, thank you. A note of thanks here, as well, to Hassen Saker, who offered kindness this week, and to Anna Badkhen, whose work inspired this blog a few days ago.

When the link to this story is live, I will post it here.

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Next spring, Tamra Tuller and Chronicle Books will be releasing a novel set in Florence, Italy, and (to a lesser extent) West Philadelphia. It took me a long time, and many drafts, to get it right, and it is only recently that we have settled on a final title.

I share that here, with an early book description:

Something is just not right with Nadia Cara. She’s become a thief, for one thing. She has secrets she can’t tell. She knows what she thinks, but when she tries to speak, the words seem far away. Now in Florence, Italy, with a Master Chef wanna-be brother, a professor father, and a mother who specializes in at-risk teens, Nadia finds herself trapped by her own obsessions and following the trail of an elusive Italian boy—a flower thief—whom no one else has ever seen.  While her father tries to write the definitive history of the 1966 flood that threatened to destroy Florence, Nadia wonders if she herself will disappear—or if she can be rescued, too.

Set against the backdrop of a glimmering city, ONE THING STOLEN is an exploration of obsession, art, and a rare neurological disorder. It is a story about the ferocious, gorgeous madness of rivers and birds. It is about surviving in a place that, fifty years ago, was rescued by uncommon heroes known as Mud Angels. It is about art and language, imagining and knowing, and the deep salvation of love written by an author who is herself obsessed with the beguiling and slippery seduction of both wings and words.  

My students Katie Goldrath, Maggie Ercolani, and Stephanie Cara inspired me as I wrote. Emily Sue Rosner and Mario Sulit helped me get the Italian right. Alyson Hagy, Amy Sarig King, and Kelly Simmons kept me going. Patty McCormick and Ruta Sepetys listened. Lori Waselchuk gave me her West Philadelphia. Wendy Robards gave so much of her time and heart during desperate days. And Tamra Tuller stood by.

Always grateful.

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That Florence novel of which I have so often spoken is also (I now confess) a West Philadelphia novel—infused with the fringe beyond the campus where I work. Yesterday, the air finally warming, I returned to those old haunts and photographed this plot of land, where a pivotal scene takes place.

That Florence novel is also, thanks to the great (loving) patience of editor Tamra Tuller and the impeccable copy editing and exceptional kindness of one Debbie DeFord Minerva, done. Oh my goodness, it is done. The hardest book I ever wrote. The fear that it would not be "good enough," finally ebbed in full this weekend, as I took one last crack at the pages that had resisted me for many months. In the midst of that work, a note (and then more notes) from Debbie filtered in.

Sometimes the impossible is not finally impossible.

And we are rarely alone.

It's almost spring, or should be soon. The hard husks inside the earth are softening. The nests are wanting eggs.

My Florence novel is also a West Philadelphia novel.

That novel is finally done.

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I walk the campus every Monday before class—always a new direction, always some memory that I am stalking. Yesterday I went the length of Locust Walk and out toward West Philadelphia, where a mod-looking bowling alley has been slipped inside a residential street and the Dental School where I once worked has the face of new authority. At the corner of 42nd and Spruce I was besieged by memories of a friend with whom I shared a passion for Russian history. The room where he kept his books. The pea soup that he made from his mother's recipe. His fascination with Tolstoy.

By the time I reached the Writers House, I was feeling melancholy. J met me downstairs. S met me upstairs. K arrived with a tiny, days-old kitten tucked into the collar beneath her chin. "They call him Wild Bill," she told me, "and I think he likes my bling," for this found refugee from the streets of West Philly had dug his claw in deep to her necklace chain and was, it seemed, intent on staying.

The past is gone, except that it leans upon our present day, except that we write it into our stories, except that it tangles into our imaginations and hovers near. The past is a yearning, and now is the bowling alley, the cleaned-up Spruce, the Writers House, the stairs, the room, Wild Bill in K's collar, and the email that arrives from J, in the evening after class. It includes a bit of found memoir that, he says, he thinks I might like. It includes the line, "most unlonely teacher."

Yes. Certainly.

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I spoke in a recent post of my privileged life—living literature, living community and ideas at the same time. I spoke of how sometimes luck walked me straight through the door of extraordinary people and let me stay awhile.

Dr. Constantine Papadakis, who served for 13 years as the president of Drexel University until his passing yesterday, was one of those big-thinking, renaissance-quality people. He was just 63, and today my city mourns his loss.

I spent time in the company of Dr. Papadakis during my work on a book commemorating the rise of Cira Centre, an historic glass building in West Philadelphia. Not a lot of time—just enough to understand and appreciate how deep a thinker he was. Our conversation was to focus on the emergence of West Philadelphia, on the shifting center of this Quaker City. It quickly spilled over into talk about Anthony Drexel and George Childs, two of my favorite historic Philadelphians. It moved from there into broader philosophical terrain, and when my team arrived a few weeks later to photograph the great doctor in that grand hall of Drexel, he was charismatic and charming all over again—more artifactual stories to tell, that bright smile on his handsome Greek face.

Drexel University is a vastly different place than it once was—anchored in with new architecture (for architecture was a Dr. Papadakis passion) by Michael Graves, I.M. Pei, and others; set off in many new directions. West Philadelphia has changed enormously, too—thanks to him, thanks to my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, and thanks to Dr. Papadakis's dear friend, Jerry Sweeney, the visionary CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust, who made certain that Cira rose above an old train yard and who set us free to write a book that led us through the door of souls like Dr. Papadakis.

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