Roslyn native Nancy Newman returned to her hometown last Wednesday to give a talk about her novel, Disturbing the Peace and to describe the creative process behind the writing and publishing of the book, which is currently in circulation.

The talk, which included book signings, was given at the Bryant Library. Ms. Newman used the occasion to recall the different library of her childhood, one that consisted of just the current Helen Glannon Room and another room, but also one that contained many warm memories for her. Ms. Newman currently lives with her family in Manhattan. As such, she related "how emotional it is to be here," as she quickly recalled sitting in front of a fireplace and reading numerous children's books and noting, years later, the influence a good library can have on a young child.

Ms. Newman also remembered the French doors and the view of the pond where a duck or two would occasionally wander into view, complete with squawking noises which themselves may be annoying on, say, a golf course, but were an interesting sight to the young Ms. Newman. Finally, the novelist thanked her parents for taking her to the old Bryant Library when she was a youngster, starting a love affair with literature that has stayed with Ms. Newman throughout her life. In addition to her writing, Ms. Newman has taught writing and literature at City University of New York. She currently conducts workshops for parents and teachers on raising children to be avid readers.

Disturbing the Peace, Ms. Newman said, is a novel about family ties. The main character, Sarah Hughes, is a 35-year-old single woman, who becomes engaged in a complex effort to find her biological mother. The genesis for the novel was fueled by the experiences of a longtime friend of Ms. Newman, who was also involved in the same process. "The idea of meeting one's blood parents at middle age lends itself to all sorts of possibilities," Ms. Newman said.

It wasn't until 10 years after her friend completed her search did Ms. Newman get around to writing the novel. At the time, she was pregnant with her third child and her friend's story started coming back to her. Ms. Newman said she had been fixated on her friend's struggle for years. It finally came out and the novel was written and eventually published.

All first book writers, fiction or nonfiction, experience frustration with their inaugural efforts. Ms. Newman started writing the novel in the mid-1980s and completed it in the early 1990s. But once the manuscript was accepted for publication by HarperCollins, Ms. Newman had to wait no less than five years for it to be released to the public.

Once it was published, the author began to worry how the adoption community in the United States would receive the novel, especially since Ms. Newman has never adopted a child herself. That community, Ms. Newman added, is quite large. Up to 30-80 million Americans have some familial ties to an adoption situation.

However, leaders in the adoption community responded to the novel with great enthusiasm. Many of them claimed that the subject had never before been portrayed in fiction. Ms. Newman said that she had read only a few nonfiction books about adoption before writing the novel; she admitted that, in the matter of expertise, the novel was written "very blindly." After it came out, Ms. Newman said she wished she had researched the subject in greater detail. Still, Disturbing the Peace is selling "very widely across the country" and Ms. Newman is now well into writing her second novel.