Excerpt from The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

By the time Sissy left for boarding school, bound for one of those inscrutable states in New England, we’d stopped speculating publicly about the whereabouts of Nora Lindell. It was impolite, for one thing. For another, it was just plain weird to indulge the interest; unhealthy to continue the conjectures. It appeared that our mothers, as we prepared to leave them, were finally rubbing off on us. We’d grown out of Halloween. Our complexions had evened out; our skin maintained a perfect equilibrium. We learned discretion from girls, about girls. We packed our trunks and suitcases, prepared for our natural and necessary moves away from home. Outwardly, we breathed sighs of relief at the somber comfort of growing up. Inwardly, we held our breath and tried to stand as still as possible, afraid we might be the only ones who didn’t yet feel the promised calm of adulthood.

But it would be a lie to pretend that every one of us—alone finally, that last night of childhood, that last night before leaving for college—didn’t close our eyes, perhaps in unison even, and imagine Nora Lindell. We closed our eyes, and we imagined both Nora and ourselves, ten years, twenty years from now. We imagined houses and cars and maybe even children. We imagined her there with us, more beautiful than our wives, more aloof, more tender, more kind. We imagined her future and our own. We closed our eyes and fell asleep to Nora Lindell, alive and happy. In the morning we advanced to adulthood, relieved at last of childhood fantasies.

Excerpted from The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard. Copyright © 2011 by Hannah Pittard. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.