From A Couch Named Marilyn:

“On Thanksgiving Day (2011), I had plenty to be grateful for: freedom from want, from harm, and from confusion. The day filled with jovial conversations, tasting the buoyancy of love over long-distance phone calls. Before dinner, I skied in the dark with my headlamp on until I was too cold to go on. Once again, I carried my skis into the cabin.

The kitchen table was set, the inside smelled of roasting squash, yams, turkey, stuffing. I was alone, not lonely, and happy to be alive. I knew other people felt unhappy to think of me spending a holiday alone, so I told my family I “was having dinner with two friends,” and looked over at Pierre and Spartacus with my fingers crossed.

I licked those same fingers after pumpkin pie and coffee, and looked around at a terribly quiet existence. There is a time and place for everything, I told myself, wondering what to do with a winter’s worth of alone time. I remembered Blanca (a beautiful wild mustang), her beauty and her strength, again wishing I could be wild and free, like her.

I am wild and free, I reminded myself as my eyes rested on the laptop. I slid the computer toward me as I pushed an empty pie plate away and realized I had two things Blanca did not—a laptop and the ability to put a story into words. I turned on the laptop, adjusted my head and shoulders, and began writing this book.”

Diana Martin:

Now, almost four years later, the first stack of copies stand proudly on our kitchen table. The decision to write this story colored and flavored every minute of my life since that cold November day.

As I toss this “baby bird” up to the open sky, I hope it adds joy and insight to the people whose hands happen to catch a copy of A Couch Named Marilyn.