How “The Fruit of Her Hands” Almost Didn’t Happen

Today Michelle Cameron, a Women Who Write member, shares the amazing story of how her debut novel almost didn’t get picked up by her agent.

After my first New York reading for my recently published historical novel, The Fruit of Her Hands, my agent, Judith, invited me out for a cup of tea. As we walked, I told her about my son’s summer internship with a publishing company.

“By the end of the summer, they were letting him write editorial letters,” I said, my mother’s pride evident in my voice. “At 19! Can you imagine?”

“That doesn’t scare you a little?” Judith probed.

“It scares me a lot,” I nodded. “Or it would if I didn’t know how talented he really is.”

Judith hesitated a little, looking over at me. “Did I ever tell you how I almost didn’t accept your work?” she asked.

I stopped short, staring at her. “No,” I gulped. “You didn’t.”

“Your query letter was in my intern’s out basket–waiting for her to add the rejection letter. It was on the top of the pile, otherwise I would never have seen it. I glanced at it–and then picked it up and read it. And I was horrified that she’d almost turned you down.”

“Why…?” I whispered, aghast.

Judith shrugged. “She’s young, she didn’t understand that yours was exactly the type of letter I hope for. I had to explain it to her–how you were writing for a niche market, how you’d identified that and demonstrated other writers who had successfully written for it. And further how–because of your family connection to the hero of your novel, you had a unique hook for publishers. And your initial chapters were well-written. So of course this was a book I wanted to see.”

We resumed walking. I was finding it a little hard to breathe. Everything that had happened to me over the past 18 months–my novel’s acceptance by Pocket Books, the wonderful work they had done in helping me shape the novel and present it so beautifully, the incredible high I had just experienced walking into a major New York bookstore and seeing my books displayed next to a poster announcing my reading–all could have been dissolved into nothing if Judith had not looked over at her intern’s out basket at that critical moment.

It was a sobering thought and it reminded me, once again, just how much luck plays a role in the capricious world of publishing.

Michelle Cameron’s debut historical novel, The Fruit of Her Hands: The Story of Shira of Ashkenaz, was released by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, in September 2009. It has been praised by Publisher’s Weekly for its “powerful immediacy,” for its “rich details” by Library Journal, as a “meticulously researched and immensely readable saga” by Jewish Woman Magazine, and as a book “rich with wonderful characters, vivid settings, and an absolutely lush and wonderful depiction of the strengths of the medieval Jewish home and community” by the San Diego Jewish World, among others. It is available in most local bookstores, as well as online. Learn more at Michelle-Cameron.com.