Dear Readers,

The reason I write a book is that I think it is the most important thing I can tell a reader at the time. I wrote Young Jane Young because I wanted to explore the reason women don’t seek and achieve higher political office. In the U.S., we, women, are 51 percent of the population, but we occupy approximately 20 percent of the seats in the House and the Senate. There are over a dozen states that have never elected a woman to any high national office. We are a nation that is not used to voting for women for anything. I don’t care what your party is: if you are a woman, if you have a wife or a daughter, if you are distantly related to a woman, if you know a woman at all, you should want her to be represented in government. You should demand to know why she isn’t. To me, that’s what Young Jane Young is about.

In the months since I finished the book, the character of our nation has changed dramatically, and these issues seem more important to me than ever.

I believe that fiction can change people’s hearts and minds. I’ll give you an example. About 90 percent of the correspondence I received after writing The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry ended with the reader telling me, “I am now off to visit my independent bookstore.” Surely, these people had noticed that there were fewer bookstores in their communities before reading A. J. Fikry. Surely, they’d come across the ubiquitous think pieces about the end of the American bookstore. And yet, a story can do what a think piece cannot. This is why I write books. And maybe this is why you read them.

Thank you and enjoy.

Gabrielle Zevin

Author of Young Jane Young