MEANT TO BE
By Judith Arnold

Some books are meant to be.

More than once between the day I typed “the end” and this moment, I believed Goodbye to All That was not one of those meant-to-be books.

Goodbye to All That is about Ruth Bendel, a woman who loves her family but is tired of taking care of them and wants only to take care of herself. She finds an apartment, lands a job, and leaves her baffled husband and three adult children to fend for themselves. I loved the Bendels and all their crises: Who will iron husband Richard’s shirts? Who will baby-sit son Doug’s rambunctious twins when he takes his wife to the Caribbean for a romantic vacation? How can daughter Melissa contemplate having a child now that she herself is the child of a broken home? Why does everyone lean on daughter Jill to make things right? Why has Doug’s wife suddenly decided to change her hairstyle? Why has Melissa’s boyfriend suddenly lost track of her G-spot? Why does Jill’s twelve-year-old daughter suddenly think her runaway grandmother is cool?

I wrote the Bendels’ story and sent it to my agent. A few days later, she called me and said, “I couldn’t get past page forty. Sorry.” She and I parted ways. And I, conceding that I had no objectivity about the project, decided Goodbye to All That wasn’t meant to be.

At a writers’ conference a few months later, I described Goodbye to All That to a friend, who said, “Oh, my God, I love this story.” She literally dragged me across the room and introduced me to an agent, insisting that he would love the story, too. I pitched it to him, he asked to see the manuscript, and a couple of months later I had a new agent.

A new agent who loved my book but got sidetracked by some movie projects and didn’t manage to sell it.

Not meant to be, I figured.

The agent’s associate loved the story, too. She phoned me and asked if she could represent it while her colleague was busy doing film deals. Sure, I said. She didn’t sell it, either.

I severed my ties with that agency, concluding…yes. This book was not meant to be.

I was wrong.

For some time, the folks at Bell Bridge Books had been asking me to submit to them. In fact, I’d requested that the agents who loved Goodbye to All That send it to Bell Bridge Books, but they didn’t want to deal with a publisher they’d never worked with before. Now that I was agentless, I could send the manuscript wherever I wanted. Off to Bell Bridge Books it went.

And lo and behold, I discovered that Goodbye to All That was meant to be, after all.

Thanks to Bell Bridge Books, readers can get to know the Bendel family, laugh and groan over their tribulations and cheer them on as they figure out who they are and what they truly want. All the loving, doting mothers who would lie down and die for their families can read about Ruth’s declaration of independence and fantasize about getting an apartment of their own, too. All the husbands and children can contemplate their wives and mothers and wonder, what would I do if she said goodbye?

Goodbye to All That was meant to be. And now, at last, here it is.