Thanks to all who came out to Books & Co on the Greene today. And thanks to Sharon Short for telling Dayton Daily News readers about not only my new novel The Latecomers, but my first novel, Mr. and Mrs. Robin Have Babies written in a composition notebook.

“I always wanted to write fiction,” says Helen Klein Ross. “At age seven, I wrote what I considered to be my first novel – about the robins in the maple tree in our back yard.”

Ross has come a long way since her first inclination to write as a young girl.

She will be at Books & Co. at The Greene on Saturday, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m., to introduce her third novel, “The Latecomers,” which opens in 1908 with 16-yearold Bridey running away from her small town in Ireland with her sweetheart so they can start their lives in the United States. But when he dies en route of ship fever, Bridey has to find her way in new world – alone and pregnant.

The novel, published by Little, Brown & Company, follows two other literary novels and many poems published widely, including in The New Yorker.

Ross grew up on the East Coast, and now lives in New York City and Lakeville, Conn., but has strong Dayton ties. While she was away at college at Cornell University, her father took a position with Monarch Marking. Her first introduction to the Dayton area was visiting on her holiday break her freshman year.

Ross is the oldest of eight children; her father passed away several years ago, but her mother and several siblings and their families reside in the Dayton area.

“I spent my college summers in Dayton,” Ross says. “I worked at J.C. Penney’s and Red Lobster over breaks – and spent many happy hours as well at my family’s neighborhood pool.” She recalls that she wrote a humorous piece for the Dayton Daily News in 1983 about the differences between living in a Midwestern city like Dayton versus in New York City.

After college, Ross worked in the advertising industry. Though she continued to work in advertising, she never forgot her love of writing – or of Dayton.

In fact, she says, she and her husband would send their daughters for part of each summer to stay with her parents.

“They called it ‘Camp Ohio,”’ Ross says. “I understood why they love it – they found it to be a friendly town, and could be more in touch with nature than is readily possible in Manhattan.” Ross’s keen awareness of places – and the similarities and differences between them – helped inspire her new novel, “The Latecomers.”

When she learned of a manor house on the market in Connecticut, she became intrigued and went to find it.

“The house was hidden from the road by trees and set down a long drive,” Ross says. “But I immediately fell in love with it.”

The house was built in 1853 by the then-governor of Connecticut, and remained in his family line until 2010, when the last family member to own it moved to Michigan. Ross and her husband bought the house in 2012, and have fully restored it.

In the process, Ross says she learned a lot about the original owner’s family and descendants as well as about the town. Though her characters are completely from her imagination, the house becomes the setting for Bridey’s life in “The Latecomers” after she arrives in America.

“Novel writing is really taking pieces of this, and bits of that, and bringing them all together in a whole new story,” Ross says. “In ‘The Latecomers,’ I explore what might happen if Bridey, a young immigrant, comes into the lives of a blue blood New England family, and the ramifications that follow. It’s a multigenerational story.”

Learn more about Ross at www.helenkleinross.com.

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