Alice had reserved her a room at the Algonquin, which delighted Veronica. She imagined Dorothy Parker sitting at the bar each time she walked past it. What followed was a dreamlike, bewildering, joyful three-day blur of meetings in offices at publishing houses and long, boozy lunches, drinks and dinners with editors who praised Ronnie’s talent and called her a genius and promised her that her novel would be a huge bestseller, that they’d need to build bigger warehouses to store all of the copies of her books. “They’re exaggerating,” Ronnie said to Alice, as they took a Town Car back to Ronnie’s hotel.
“Some,” said Alice, and smiled. “But not entirely.” She squeezed Ronnie’s hand. “Enjoy the ride, hon,” she said. “This only happens once.”
By the end of her second day in the city, three publishing houses had made offers. Ronnie called her parents （“You wrote a novel?”）， her sister （“Am I in it? You can put me in it; just make me ten pounds thinner”）， her best friends, and Lee, laughing and crying, hardly believing her good fortune. With Alice’s assistance, she chose the house where she’d be edited by a young woman about her age; where they offered her a contract for two books, not just the one she’d written. “You want people who are going to build a career, not just publish a book,” Alice counseled. Veronica signed the contract. Then she went back to Boston and stowed the first chunk of money in a savings account at the First Bank of New England, where her father worked. In August, she defended her thesis; in September, she began her first semester as a teacher. The Summer Sisters was scheduled to come out the following spring, right after Mother’s Day, which, Alice told her, was the ideal time for a summer book to go on sale. Ronnie started work on her next book and resumed her academic life, the one she’d thought of as her real life.
“Most first novels flop,” her agent told her bluntly. “Even the ones acquired for a lot of money. Even the ones with lots of advertising and publicity money behind them. This could be an exception, but I don’t want you counting on it.”
“In other words, don’t quit my day job?” Ronnie asked.
Alice smiled. “Exactly right.”
It was easy enough to put her suede boots back in her closet and her fedora on a shelf; easy to stop acting like a novelist, which was what Ronnie felt like she’d been doing. As the school year progressed, she’d get the occasional reminders of what was to come—a cover for her to approve; early, starred reviews in the trade publicatioins to squeal over—but, for the most part, the idea that she was a soon-to-be published author felt like a fantasy. Her students, her lesson plans, the books she assigned, the lectures she wrote, and the papers she stayed up late to grade: those things felt real. So did her romance with Lee Weinberg, who was wooing her with great determination. Lee took her for long walks in the Public Gardens, and to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. They went ice skating, on a frozen pond in his hometown in Connecticut, and afterward Lee built a fire in the fireplace, brought her a cup of hot cider, and tucked an afghan made of soft wool around her. “This is wonderful,” Ronnie said, as Lee came to sit beside her. Her legs felt pleasantly sore from the skating, unused muscles tingling as they warmed. She settled her head on his shoulder, making a pleased noise as he put his arm around her and pulled her close. “I want to make you happy,” he said, murmuring the words against her temple, pressing them into her skin.
The Summer Sisters was published in 1979, and it landed with all the splash that Alice and Ronnie’s editor, Emily, could have hoped for: a review in Time magazine and one in Life and one in Ladies’ Home Journal. The Boston Globe hailed her as a hometown hero in a profile that took up most of the Sunday paper’s feature section, and the paper’s book critic pronounced the novel “the must-have beach accessory for this summer.”
The New York Times critic was more than a little condescending—he called the book “glib” and “melodramatic,” words Ronnie knew would live in her memory forever—but it was a long review that featured a full-color picture of the book’s cover, and a smaller shot of Ronnie, and both Alice and Emily assured her that even a mixed review would interest the readers Ronnie wanted—namely, women. “If Gary Holt had raved about it, it would have been the kiss of death,” Alice explained, over martinis in the Algonquin’s bar. “Gary Holt is not your audience. Mrs. Gary Holt is.”
“And her sister, her daughters, and every one of her friends,” Emily added, and lifted her own martini for a toast.