Dreams Really Do Come True!

Yesterday, I boxed up three copies of Finding Grace and five copies of Erin's Ring, to fulfill a new order I'd gotten, and then I headed to the post office to mail them to a bookstore.  You know, not a virtual bookstore (like Amazon), but an actual bookstore--with shelves and displays and cash registers and everything.

But the bookstore that put in this order wasn't any old bookstore, no-sir-ee!  It was the Hammes Bookstore at the University of Notre Dame!

That's right!  My books are going to be for sale at Our Lady's university out in South Bend, IN.  I am so excited about this that I'm tempted to hop on a plane to see it with my own eyes (it would be, as Rudy's father said when he saw the football stadium for the first time in the movie Rudy, "the most beautiful sight these eyes have ever seen!").  But I think I'll just try to get one of my two nephews, who are currently students out there, to snap some cell phone pics and forward them to me once the books make it onto the shelves.

Back when Finding Grace first came out in 2012, I contacted the ND bookstore to see if they would be willing to carry it.  (After all, Notre Dame plays a part in that story--and there is even a great scene at the Grotto.)  When nothing came of that, I thought, "Well, I tried."  I'd always known it was a long shot, and I had no plans to try again.

Then last fall, the whole Pearl clan was out at Notre Dame for a football weekend, and when one of my Pearl sisters-in-law and I were in the bookstore together, we passed a table filled with Irish-themed books.  "Your books belong here," she said.  I told her I'd looked into that years ago, but she countered with, "Yeah, but that was before you were an award winner!"  (My Pearl sisters-in-law are the best cheerleaders in all the land, they truly are.)

Bolstered by my sister-in-law's confidence in me, I decided I didn't have anything to lose; and this time I struck gold (or blue and gold).  It took a while to take care of the business end of things, but the books are now on their way out to the Midwest.  And I am left here in NH, pinching myself, and realizing that sometimes, dreams really do come true!