The Soccer Star

LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

LETTER FROM THE AUTHORFor many years my fall, spring, and summer weekends were full of soccer games. All three of my children played, and my husband coached recreational teams for years.

Soccer isn’t a sport I grew up playing or watching. I attended my first game in 1984, but I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Friends kept telling me how big soccer—they called it football—was outside the U.S., but I never realized how big until June 26, 1994, when I attended a World Cup match between Colombia and Switzerland at Stanford Stadium. Not even the Olympics or two Super Bowls I’d attended came close to matching the excitement and passion of these soccer fans.

Ever since then, I wanted to write a romance with soccer as the background, but it wasn’t until my son started playing competitive soccer for an Oregon club that the story ideas started flowing. After speaking with one of my son’s coaches, who also played for the Portland Timbers the year before they became an MLS club, a professional soccer player named Ryker James came to life in my imagination. This story is the result.

Having access to people who can help with research adds realism to a story. I was fortunate in the soccer assistance I received, but when it came to my heroine, Lucy, who’d had a liver transplant as a teen, I wasn’t sure where to turn for help.

A friend had been a living donor for her daughter’s successful liver transplant, but I happened to mention my work-in progress to another mom during our kids’ swimming practice. It turned out she was a two-time liver and kidney transplant recipient. Talking with her helped me understand and fill in Lucy’s backstory of having liver failure. It also made me understand the importance of organ donation and the lives saved by transplants.

To all those who have signed up to be donors: thank you!

Melissa